Resigned to destiny contd... (.)

“Hello,” he mumbled into the phone.

“Hello! Good Morning,” she chirped.

“God! It’s not even 7. I suppose our rendezvous was decided to be at 11. Why are you waking me up so early in the morning?”

“Ummm… Actually, I won’t be able to go out with you today. In fact I’m leaving for home in the evening.”

“What? But we were supposed to go shopping today and have dinner together.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m really sorry. Ma insisted that I go with her to get my clothes fitted and all my relatives invited me to their places. The decision was taken yesterday morning. I tried telling you in the evening but couldn’t.”

“You can’t be going off today. Please stay back for a day or two more. I had so many things planned. I’ll book the ticket for you. I’ll even drop you home if that’s what’s needed.”

“I know how difficult this all must be for you. First Viplav left and now I am going away. Hey buddy, even we are going to miss you. I’m already thinking how I’ll choose books to read without you. Promise me you’ll be in contact always.”

“Yeah sure. We’ll remain in contact forever. I’ll come to your wedding and then when you christen your first baby. I’ll come even for the second baby. We’ll meet whenever possible. You’ll have to cross this place to go to your parents and I’ll always meet you in the station.”

“You forgot to mention. I’ll visit you on your wedding and be there when you become a father. And if you don’t turn up in the station I’ll get down the train to find you and give you a nice tongue lashing,” she said sniffing.

“Well then, bye. Call me after you reach home. Safe journey and don’t irritate your fellow passengers.”

“I don’t irritate anybody. Ah, let it be. I’ll give a call when I reach.”

His sleep deserted him. She was going away today and he was not even getting a chance to give her a hint that he loves her. She was going today. He was not supposed to be Devdas nor Dutta nor Julia Roberts from ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’. The next time he sees her she’ll be dressed as the bride of another man and thereafter somebody else’s wife. He had to get away. He had to stop his brain from analyzing the situation further. He walked over to his book shelf and picked up the recent fiction he had borrowed from the library. He sat in his couch unmoved for the next 5 hours immersed in the story. When he finished it, he cried, cried out loud for his heart was weeping.

*****

The D-day. Her wedding day. He was alongside Viplav in the wedding procession. Somebody urged him to dance and he stood at the same place for a long time. They reached her place. The wedding ceremony started. It ended and he was on his way back home. All he remembered of the fateful day was she looked angelic and she had smiled up to him before joining Viplav for the ceremony.

*****

It had been more than a week that he had lost track of his life. He walked onto the mirror and the man looking back at him had hollow cheeks, overgrown beard, red, puffy eyes and a ghost of a smile. He couldn’t recognize himself. Yesterday night he had promised himself that from that moment he’ll try and get over her. He hadn’t even talked to her in the last seven days, she was busy as a new bride. He had thought of getting a semblance of his life back.

And so he started. He shaved his face, ate gracious amount of food, pasted a smile on his face, and left for his office. At office everybody seemed pleased with him and he worked harder than ever to finish his pending jobs. After his working hours he reached his library and stood deciding which book to borrow. His eyes wandered to the couch together they had occupied. He averted his eyes and selected the first book his eyes landed upon. At the coffee shop, he looked out for his favorite table and reminded himself to forget all. After dinner, he switched on the TV. The program showing was her favorite and he changed the channel. When he found nothing worthwhile watching, he read the book he had with him. At 10 pm he was tempted to call her yet once more and she as usual didn’t pick up his call.

Fifteen days later he realized this had become a routine except that she picked up his call thrice and called once. The conversation time had reduced and was very impersonal yet personal.

Often he would sit at one place and think if he had done things differently, maybe she would still be in his life. If he had dressed elegantly rather than his funtoosh manner, if he had talked of better things, if he had laughed at the right places, if he had fought less with her, if he had smiled more with her, if he weren’t so shy, if he had not just met her.

 He wrote:

उसके गम में हमने जीना छोड़ दिया 

पर न उसका गम गया न ही जीवन गया

हम रह गए उसके तस्वीरों के संग 

हमसे वो पलछिन यादें भी मिटाए न गए

आखिर ये ही हुआ करते थे कभी जीवन के रंग

अब ज़िन्दगी के साथ फिर सुलह करना है

उसके जाने के गम में अब जीना है 

Four months later he still felt the same way when both she and Viplav had visited him and Viplav left for on-site work. His life had come back to normalcy. He went out, partied, worked hard, read, surfed on the net. Whenever anything remotely connected to her came up, he shifted to some other form of amusing himself.

Another two months later, he was walking from the office building to the gate while talking to her.

“It’s difficult without Viplav. I should have stayed where I was until he came back.”

“Is there a problem? Something I can do. Tell me and it’ll be done.”

“I guess I am missing him so much that every little situation infuriates me. Long distance relationship when you are married can be so tiresome.”

“Do you miss me?” He regretted the question as soon as he put it. He waited for the answer with closed eyes and slow deep breathing.

She said, “I miss Viplav. But with you, I miss the moments. I miss the library and the chats of the coffee shop. I miss the wrinkling of your nose when you smelled something offensive. I miss the sound of your laugh. I miss being with you. And I miss Viplav too.”

Resigned to destiny contd..

“She had been hiding there behind a book with puffy eyes and red nose. She had been crying in one of the corners of the library, as destiny would have, in my favorite section. As soon our eyes met, she hastily lowered her eyes, picked up her bag and dashed towards the exit. I still have to know why I blocked the way and stood firm when all she did was trying to escape from an embarrassing situation. I coaxed her into telling me her problem.

After much persuasion she complied. Sheena had been nasty to her. Both of them working at the same place and Sheena being her senior, she could do nothing about it. I was somehow not surprised at this revelation. Knowing Sheena I could sympathize with her. She gradually relaxed in my company though later she sure mentioned I must be a back-biter. We moved on to other topics like favorite books, authors, music, current affairs. We were so engrossed in our animated discussion that the librarian had to remind us of the ultimate code of conduct of a library, silence.

After this first encounter in library, we kept on bumping into each other many times, initially due to co-incidence and later because I waited for her there. I am not sure when it happened so, but I was living out the entire day so that I could talk to her in the evening. We had not yet exchanged phone numbers. I felt shy to ask and she never offered.

Then this other day, after almost three months, she invited me to dinner with her and Viplav. I had heard her telling so much about him, but not until I met him that I believed them all true. She loved him loads and he loved her with his existence. I could sense that from the first moment I saw them together. Till today, my observation is no different.

That day, Viplav insisted us to exchange mobile numbers. All three of us together went out many times after this and many a times we were joined by our friends. During other occasions we would walk out of the library together to the nearest coffee outlet and sit there discussing everything between the sky and the bottom of the ocean. We had outings and loads of fun. It had become a ritual for both of us to talk for around 15 minutes before she talked to Viplav and went off to sleep.

And somewhere amidst all this I fell in love with her, without knowing it. When she announced the date of her engagement and then told me that since Viplav has been transferred from the city, she will be moving out few days before the wedding, I realized it was not possible for me to let her go away. I tried talking her out of leaving the city, after all Viplav has to go on-site within this year. She is determined.

I love her and want her for myself. But she loves Viplav and he in turn her. I am the one out of place and will have to move. I just pray she will be happy in her new life and live life to the fullest,” he finished hurriedly and managed to keep the tears at bay.

“You are behaving like Devdas. Come on bro, maybe she loves you as well. But can’t say it because of Viplav and because you never mentioned love to her. Give it a try man. Try and steal her. We’ll back you up.”

“Ah! Friends, of course. But they have said already that loving someone means doesn’t mean keeping them for yourself, it means letting them do whatever will keep them happy. I know Viplav is perfect for her; that is my first hand information. I will not cause chaos and even though I can’t have her as a lover, I want her as a friend in my life always.”

“So that you will always be reminded of what you could have and didn’t.”

“No, because I treasure that friendship more than anything to lose it over something I can’t have.”

“Ok. Whatever you decide. Now complete your drink. Its late already and there is office to be attended tomorrow.”

“I can’t drink. I am not Devdas in that sense. Let’s leave.”

He walked all the way to his home, some 5 km. He needed to think. He needed to know why God would do this to him. He had been an ideal person all his life. He also had another food for thought. Even though he vehemently refused to admit his love to her, what would happen if he dropped a hint or two? Did she love him, just a little bit? Would she in her wildest dreams ever agree? Damn it, she got engaged today, he thought bitterly. But he should give it a try. After all he would be with her the entire next day. He was supposed to go shopping with her to find a gift for Viplav and then she was giving him a treat of a movie and dinner for her beautiful arrangement. Maybe he should try tomorrow. Maybe he will, he thought as he entered his apartment.

Resigned to destiny contd.

Three hours and many such visits to the washroom later he was finally walking into the bar to drink his way to oblivion without a care for the world. But it was not supposed to be so. His two closest friends walked through the door towards him and gave him knowing smiles. They were the only two people who knew he loved her too much to see her get married to someone else. They didn’t object to his drinking, rather ordered cocktails for themselves too. They had never asked him the story though they did know about his sufferings. Today they asked and he found himself speaking.

“Ironically, I met her the first time when I was introduced to her along with Viplav as her boyfriend,” he laughed at his own stupidity.

“You must be kidding. If you knew she was seeing somebody already, how could you develop tender feelings for her?”

“Even I’d like an answer to that. I knew she had a man in her life. I knew she loved him and Viplav, well, he loves her with his own existence. That is the reason I’m standing in the sideline watching.”

“What happened? She had a fight with Viplav and you felt a need to be around and fell in love?”

He laughed and lifted his glass of scotch to his mouth, immediately wrinkled his nose against the offensive smell of the liquor and left it untouched on the table again. Since the day he found she was averse to alcoholic beverages, he had been as far away as possible from them. His friends had often teased him saying he was getting soft. With a pang of sorrow he tried remembering how he got himself into such an absurd and impossible situation.

“Hey, man, I’m asking you. You won’t evade me tonight.”

“Yeah, I knew she had a boyfriend,” he said with a sigh. “The first time I met her all I saw was a girl who was just out of college and had a lot to learn about the world, yet had a remarkable insight to many things. Sheena, our hostess, also our common friend, had arranged one of those musical parties where you had to shout to converse. We exchanged a few sentences and that was all.

After that I saw her in two more parties Sheena and I both attended. It was a season of achievements of our friends, remember. On both occasions we exchanged a few witty remarks, laughed at them and got along with the rest of the party. And the next thing I know, the very next evening of the second party I bumped into her in my library.”

Both his friends quirked their brows.

“Save your imaginations, you’ll need them tomorrow morning for finding excuses for being late to the office after tonight’s hangover. She had been hiding there behind a book with puffy eyes and red nose. She had been crying...”

Resigned to destiny

An omnipresent love story

Had I known the depth of the waters,

I would have never plunged in the sea.

Had I known the difficulties of the battle,

I would have never waged one.

Had I known the turmoil of truth,

I would have never sought it.

Had I known I would have love you so very much,

I would have never let my path cross yours….

He thought of these self-composed verses for the fourth time in the last two hours that he spent smiling at various people in the engagement party of his love. The engagement of his love to the man of her dreams, Viplav. And he being her friend was supposed to be receiving people, seeing whether they were comfortable, and enjoying the party and the food. The party, he too would have enjoyed had it not been an ordeal to keep his eyes expressionless and his face smiling. It was a banquet hall filled with blooming gerberas, the flower she adored the most. The walls were interlaced with ribbons of blue and white, her favorite colors. The entire decoration was as delicate as her sensitive nature and as elegant as her poise. How could it not be when it was he who had supervised the decorations?

“Ah, look at them. They look so good together,” he heard someone say.

He forced a smile and kept going his way to fetch a glass of water for an aged lady. God, how much he wanted to run away from this place into the sanctity of his one bedroom apartment where he could open a book or work away in his laptop and forget the world he lived in, forget that his life had people he loves and cares for, forget that there were people in the world who might love him too.

No one noticed his inner turmoil, rather no one noticed him. All eyes were on Viplav, the man he could happily throttle and take his place. He would have throttled if only she didn’t love that fool.

“Oh! I am destiny’s fool!” he remembered the lines of some movie he had watched lately. And that was what he was he thought with a smirk. His chain of thought was broken by his love.

“Where are you? You certainly had walked into a different world where someone was torturing you.”

“Me, tortured! Sure, you were dreaming about it when Viplav slid his ring onto your finger. Viplav, dude watch out. She is having second thoughts already.”

“That was a good method to contrive your way out of my question. Yet I am waiting for the answer,” she said while Viplav was nudging her to turn the other way to meet some of his distant relatives.

He rushed to the washroom, to wash his face as well as walk back to reality. What did he speak aloud, that too to her? He was going insane and needed some intoxicant to drown his emotions. Once he is allowed to leave, he will buy himself a drink or two he decided. He had to celebrate, after all she got engaged, and he was still a free man. A very good reason to celebrate, it was a damned too good reason to celebrate.

Three hours and many such visits to the washroom later he was finally walking into the bar to drink his way to oblivion without a care for the world. But it was not supposed to be so. His two closest friends walked through the door towards him and gave knowing smiles. They were the only two people who knew he loved her too much to see her get married to someone else. They didn’t object to his drinking, rather ordered cocktails for themselves too. They had never asked him the story though they did know about his sufferings. Today they asked and he found himself speaking.

“I met her….”

(Would have continued the story till the end but it has become lengthy for a blog post. Will write further after you all have read and commented on the story up till now…) 

Coming soon

An omnipresent love story

It has been my general observation that one human being loves many of his species and in turn is loved by many... but life provides him/her with one partner on whom to lavish all the love content of his/her heart... 

All love stories concern the one man finding his true love through a series of heavenly mediated situations, gaining her love or rather ascertaining the fact that she already loves him, and then either a happily ever after or a premature death at the hands of fiends...

Some stories do talk about a guy falling in love with this girl whom he has to forgo and then again heavenly mediations take him to his love bug... the initial love is a matter of a few paragraphs or two pages at most... and often the lead lady has a friend who is a lover too and sacrifices his love for the love of his life... this side role character is lost in the pages and forgotten... we, the readers,might sympathize or even empathize with them but at the end of the story we neglect their existence... no book review ever gives these details a space in their limited word compositions... though in reality, these situations are the most longest and most remembered later either with a laugh or with a sad smile...

So, i concluded that i must give this lover a chance to be the hero of some story... my attempt might give many a forlorn hearts a chance to weep, and many a romantic novel fans to ditch my blog forever...

coming soon...

Nearing Adieu!

X and Y were walking down the streets after loads of shopping. A cool breeze on the air made them stroll through the busy road. Both had a dreamy look on their face and were smiling with amusement.

“These days it feels like a time turner is at work,” X said after sometime.

“Harry Porter fan, eh?”

“That I am. But don’t you too feel so. Time flies between past, present, and future.”

“I thought I live in the present.”

“May be I am the only foolish person thinking about it.”

“Come on. You are not foolish, though you are a sentimentalist,” Y chided.

“Oh! You are trying to cheer me up.”

“Tell me about it and let us both decide.”

For a moment X hesitated and then seeing the earnest look on Y’s face, X continued, “Well, after being here for 4 long years, we are supposed to be leaving next month. Many a times I pass through some street, some corner and I reminisce the past. Remembering how it had been. In most of the instances, I can’t even remember how I came to know about a street, a shop and how I became a regular visitor.” X paused to look at Y who was listening with rapt attention.

“That’s normal; when you know you are leaving a place for good and may not have a chance to come back to your haunts again for a long time to come.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Was that all?”

“There is more, of course. I also think of the people I met, of the friends I got and I still have. I think of situations where I could have done things differently and life would have been easier and less complicated. I often think of life here without one or the other person and imagine if I still would have been the same human I am now or I would have been something else.”

“Now now. Reminiscing is fine but retrospection, that too over the years you have enjoyed. And have you thought that life might have been less complicated without certain incidents, but they might have been less interesting too. There is also another fact that whenever you were met with a challenge you found a quality in yourself to help you or you found a friend. You would have hated missing all of it.”

“I guess those were the only things that let me handle a challenge and emerge victorious. Yes, I could not have missed all that.”

“What about the present then?

“There is a life to be lived at present too. Is there not? There are numerous little odds and ends to be set at right before leaving. Ah, the troubles of a farewell.”

“Melodrama at its height! Future would be interesting to listen to I hope.”

X raised brows in disinterest, and then continued on the tirade. “When I think of the past immediately, as if time flew by, I think about the future. What would we be doing next year this time? Will we be in contact with the numerous of our friends and acquaintances? Who else would be added to my life? So on and so forth.”

“I told you, you a sentimentalist, through and through, though I doubt if there exists word like that.”

“There is. And don’t mind me. I am a fool after all. If not for thinking and feeling as I do, but for telling you, you of all people about my sentiments, if that is what they are. I had to know you’d laugh and call me an over- sentimental fool.”

“Do me some justice after all. I never used the word fool to describe you, though I am inclined to now.”

“There you go. All justice done.” So saying X jumped into their mode of transportation wondering what would be the outcome of the final of IPL tomorrow.

The more "Difficult", The more "Exciting"

Exams are approaching... haven't read a single word... yet studying seems boring...may be coz passing marks are attainable....