I Too Had a Love Story (21 page)

I was blank. All that came to my mind was—I need to go back home, to my parents. At the mid-way stop, I got off the bus and boarded one that went back to Burla. A different sort of calm had come over me. I wasn’t crying.

When, hours later, I opened the door to my house, I saw my parents staring at me wondering why I was back. I stood there staring back at them in response.

I was still calm.

Then, summoning all my courage, I told them the saddest news of my life.

As soon as mom heard, she gripped my wrist and looked at the pictures of prophets and Gods on our wall in anger. Dad buried his face in his hands. Mom cried, Dad cried and their cries echoed in that room. I was still calm. Or maybe it was a numbness. Nothing seemed to register in my mind. I looked at them for a while and then left them to go into my room.

I lay on my bed, pulling the blanket completely over me. I curled up there, squeezing my hands between my thighs.

I cried.

‘For past few hours, we were seeing the signs of improvement in her, but all of a sudden her blood pressure fell down drastically. The impact was so much that it led to her heart collapse,’ said the doctors.

The family wanted to see her.

The doctors said they couldn’t hand over the body to the family.

(Did you notice? Yes,
body
. That’s what they said. She no longer had a name. She was just a
body
. A dead body.)

It was an accident and the police had to be involved, there were legal formalities to be taken care of, after which her body was to be taken for the postmortem. The family pleaded with them to spare her from the autopsy, but the authorities drove her to a place where the rest of her mortal remains were torn apart.

Far away from all that was happening, I was still in a state of shock. The truth was so hard to accept. I don’t know what happened later, but I could imagine what was happening at her place … I heard those cries of pain around me. I saw her fingers, and I clutched at her ring in my right pocket. I saw her being swathed in white and I grabbed her colourful
sari
close to my heart. Something within me was going numb, realizing that I could not be there during her last moments.

Moments later, I could feel that something innocent was being burnt.

I didn’t even get a chance to kiss her dead hand …

A dead silence persisted in my house. Unlike me, my parents cried in private, for they had to strengthen me. They didn’t even get to see the girl their son wanted to marry.

In the evening, Dad booked the tickets and the next day, both of us left for Faridabad.

A day later, in the afternoon, I opened the door to their house. Amidst everyone (I didn’t know them all), I noticed her mom and I rushed to hug her, before we both burst into tears.

The irony of it … The home, which was going to sparkle in celebration of their daughter’s engagement, had such a different atmosphere now. People in dull clothes sat on a giant mattress on the floor of the vacant drawing room. There were whispers and there were sudden cries. And there were those eyes in which the tears had dried up. A curse had fallen upon us all.

Amid the ordeal of surviving without her, at her home, the very place where she was brought up and nurtured, my day passed somehow. Evening approached. More distant relatives, more acquaintances had arrived. And this led to more cries and more tears. Seeing all this, I wanted to run away to some place where I could be alone with just her memories for company … to room 301 maybe …

Everything was so unbelievable. Yet, it was real.

It got dark at about eight. I was at a photo-studio getting a picture of my dead girlfriend framed, to keep in the
gurudwara
during the last prayer for her, scheduled for the next day. Guess which picture …?

It was one of those, which she stayed awake till dawn to send me, when I was in my US office. Never in my worst nightmare
could I have thought that someday I’d be using her picture for this purpose.

When the shopkeeper handed me the frame, I happened to look into her eyes in that picture. They were beautiful.

Seconds later, I felt Ami di’s fingers wiping my wet eyelashes. We paid and left for home.

The next day, we all assembled in the
gurudwara
. A last prayer for the peace of her departed soul. The moment I entered, my gaze fell upon her photograph which was now decked with flowers. No one on earth would want to see his girlfriend’s picture decked with flowers. It just kills you. And it’s so hard to face this truth again and again and, yet, restrain yourself in front of everybody.

She still appeared so beautiful.

Everyone gathered there was dressed in white. A few people were praying. When I passed by the row of ladies, I heard a few murmurs, ‘This is the guy who was going to marry her.’

I heard but I ignored them and made my way to the extreme corner, away from my dad, her dad, her family and God.

I don’t remember what happened and for how long I was there. I was with her in my memories. And, subconsciously, I was following the actions of the others. When they stood up, I stood up. When they bowed, I bowed. In a few hours, I think, it was all over … except for the pain in my aching heart.

Back at her home that afternoon, the family which was to host a dinner celebrating the engagement was now hosting her funeral lunch. The cooks who had been booked to prepare a lavish cuisine were now preparing something else. The people who got engagement invitations a few days ago were now gathered for such a different reason. And where was I …?

Serving lunch to the people who didn’t even know me.

In the corner of that room, I saw my own fate mocking me.

The day ended and the night arrived again. And while I wished that her soul may rest in peace, my own soul was restless within. I was trying to sleep, but sleep was far from me. Images from the time I had spent with her kept running through my mind for a long time. That’s the last thing I remember. I don’t know when that far away sleep came near and embraced me.

‘Hey! He is back!’

‘Oooooooohhh! Come on, everybody. Ravin’s back after his engagement.’

Two days later, I was back in my office. Apart from one or two people, no one was aware how reality had drastically changed for me, how things were so different from what everyone assumed.

And, unaware, my friends and colleagues rushed to me the moment they saw me coming out of the elevator on our floor. In no time, before I could say anything, I found myself enclosed in an irregular circle of people. They were shouting, singing and demanding a treat from me.

I stood silently.

Someone shouted, ‘Hey, show us your ring.’ Someone else in the crowd pulled at my right hand, looking for it.

I still stood silently.

But the entire floor kept looking at the gathering around me. From far away, a few folks shouted, ‘Congrats! Buddy.’

‘Where is the ring? Did you forget it in the shower? Or have you dumped it in some bank’s locker?’

‘Hahahaha!’

‘Hey, come on. Speak up.’

And I was looking at the floor, watching nothing, gathering the strength to speak.

‘If she gets to know that you aren’t wearing her ring, isn’t she gonna shout at you?’ someone joked.

And I looked up to face them all. Some of them noticed my damp eyes and they stopped their jokes.

‘She will never shout at me,’ I said softly to the people in front of me. A few heard, a few did not.

’Why not? Have you started scaring her?’ asked a voice from behind me. ‘Hahahaha!’

I turned and faced everybody. My eyes told them my misery. And I just managed to say, ‘Because she is no more.’

She died. I survived.

Because I survived, I died everyday.

I was bound by my stars to live a lonely life. Without her, I felt so alone. Though the fact is that it’s just
she
who is gone and everything else is the same. But this ‘everything else’ is nothing to me …

I miss her in my days. I miss her in my nights. I miss her every moment of my life.

And I’ll tell you what this loneliness feels like, what it feels like to live a life without the person you loved more than anything or anyone else in the world:

Recalling something about her, you happen to laugh and in no time, sometimes even as you laugh, you taste your own tears.

The more you want to avoid romance around you, the more you will find it. It will torture you. You will see couples kissing and hugging each other, resting their heads on each other’s shoulders. You will see them everywhere, even in the movie halls where you’ll want to spend a few hours in darkness. You will find a pair sitting next to you, doing all that you, some time in the past, did with your beloved. You will feel pain, your heart
will bleed. And, very calmly, you will walk on pretending you didn’t see anything.

Your friends will talk about yet another hot chick. But all the good-looking girls on this planet will fail to attract you. Nothing excites you, even your sexual desires go into hibernation. While working out in the gym, you will try to lift the heaviest weights. Later, standing under the shower, you will cry hard but nobody will hear you. The splashing of the shower will mask the sounds of your sobbing.

You will search for and consume anything that can erase your memory.

And, believe me, your life will appear worse than death.

Every thing that brought a smile to my face had now started torturing me. Even the
Shaadi.com
ads on the Internet added to my agony. I remember how she used to tell me that, after our marriage, we would put a success story on the website. I never knew I would be writing a tragedy.

At times, I felt like a drug addict who badly needs his next hit. But at least an addict has his drugs … I felt suffocated. As if something was stopping my breath. As if something was choking my soul.

I got scared of things. I don’t know what they were, but they wouldn’t let me sleep. And, like a kid, I’d rush to my mom, to sleep beside her. She would pat my forehead. Still, for hours, I would stare at the fan rotating above me.

If ever I fell asleep, I would wake to nightmares, screaming. The time was always 4 a.m.

20 July 2007

A very special day. A day of celebration and mourning.

Another evening arrives, so similar and so different from the one exactly a year ago. This evening, I am recalling that evening, when I received her first SMS, when we talked for the first time, on the phone. Wanting to know—from someone, everyone and no one—why I had to live both these evenings. Life would have been bliss, if I were to live only one of them, but not both. Had the second not arrived, I would have been kissing my engagement ring, talking to her, celebrating a year of being together. Had the first not arrived, there would have been no second one.

It was raining then and it is raining today as well. I didn’t have a love life then and I have none, now. I never wished to have someone so special or to become so special to someone then, nor do I feel that way today.

But that evening she was talking to me, questioning me, laughing at my sense of humor, but she is not doing that today. I didn’t know her at all then, today she lives somewhere close to my soul.

When I look back, I laugh and cry over those moments. They bring back such mixed feelings that make me so restless.
Should I celebrate or should I weep? Look what I had, look what I lost …

I remember, while talking to her, how I had brandished my invisible sword in the air in front of an invisible audience, and announced like a king, ‘This day will be celebrated throughout the nation and declared a public holiday henceforth. Schools and colleges will remain closed on this day. This will be a second Valentine’s Day for people in love.’

And she had laughed at my craziness.

When I look back now, I am relieved that I wasn’t a king and there was no real audience for, had they come to me now and asked me to celebrate, I would have no answers.

Here I am, feeling so alone even in the most crowded of places. And without my better half, this remaining half is getting worse day by day. So much pain, so much grief … Even the tears have dried up.

But still, I have to sustain myself, I have to live and I have to laugh …

And, therefore, on this day in my office when there is nobody on my floor, I open her picture on my computer. I tease her, pinch her nose, run my fingers over her eyes, cheeks and beautiful lips, kiss her passionately again after so long and say, ‘Congratulations! We’ve now been a couple for a year. Three days of fighting and 362 days of love. Not that bad
haan
?’

And I run to the washroom to wash away my tears. I don’t want to cry today.

The day passes in an effort to laugh and to be happy by any means. Now night has arrived. Lying down on my bed, I wonder … If I were in her place and she in mine, what would her life have been like? Would she have been able to survive without me? Would she be living just for the sake of living, for the sake of her family, the way I do now? Would she still have faith in
God, which I lost long back? Would her family be thinking of another match for her? Would she, one day, forget me?

One year later

Things around me have returned to what they were some two years ago, before Khushi came into my life. The romantic movies on my video shelf have been replaced by action movies. I am sleeping on time, as there are no late-night calls now. My Orkut status has rolled back from ‘committed’ to ‘single’. I didn’t want to change it because I still feel committed to her. But the awkward questions from people on my scrapbook made me.

With her, everything else has gone—my dreams, my happiness, my good-looking future and a lot more. I have changed (of course, people tend to). It’s been almost a year since I’ve laughed. But I have learnt to wear a fake smile. It’s very difficult, but it makes my parents feel that I am getting better, even though I know I’m not. I don’t talk much. When I am with friends, I want to be alone. When I am alone, I want company. Nothing comforts.

With the arrival of night and the passing of each day, I realize that another day of my lonely life has gone. So, I am now little closer to the world where she has gone.

And people, especially my relatives, have started to say that I should get married, that my condition is not good. They don’t have the courage to say that to my face, so they hint at it, subtly. My parents (just like anybody else’s) want to see me happy. They also feel that only some other girl could console me and make me forget everything and start a new life.

But, another girl?

What would I tell her? That I spent the best hour of my life in the lap of a girl who is not you? That I may have married you but I’m still in love with a girl who doesn’t exist? That whatever you do, every time I compare you with her, even
when you kiss me? Won’t I be screwing up so many lives—the girl’s, her family’s, my family’s. And mine? But mine is already screwed up.

I keep asking myself these questions. And because I don’t have any answers to them, I walk away whenever this subject comes up. And then my mom and dad ask me, ‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

‘How long are you going to escape these questions
beta
? You’ve got to settle down some day.’

‘I don’t feel like it,’ I say. Then, after a long pause, ‘All right, I am getting late. I am leaving to see a friend of mine.’

‘Wait! You have to answer us. Why can’t you think again of settling down? Why can’t you think of a different girl?’

‘I cannot, Dad.’

‘But why not?’

‘Because …’ and I stop and walk away from the discussion and my home.

In the background, I hear my Dad shouting the same question ‘But why not?’

‘Because, to think of another girl, I feel like a whore,’ I silently say to the emptiness around me.

I am in my neighborhood park. It is early morning. After a long jog I am resting on a bench. There is a woman sitting next to me. I don’t know her.

She is knitting a red sweater. She is with her daughter who is on the see-saw with another boy in that park. She is probably six years old.

There are a lot of people in the park. A lot of kids too. I don’t know any of them.

I am lost in thought, with my hands underneath my chin. The see-saw, right in front of my eyes, has become blurred. My eyes don’t
move. Interrupting my thoughts, I hear the loud voice of the woman sitting next to me.

‘Don’t do that! Sit properly or you’ll fall.’

In front of my unfocussed eyes, the blurred see-saw is rising up and going down. Then it speeds up and I hear the same voice again.

‘Don’t do that, you will fall … No … No … Noooo!’

All of sudden, the other side of the see-saw doesn’t come up. It stops abruptly.

The little girl is lying on the ground. I am trying to understand what has happened.

Her mother sitting next to me cries her name.

Her name …

I know that name.

And, suddenly, I am scared. I look at her and then at her daughter. I run to help her. I am worried and breathing heavily. I kneel to lift her up. She is not crying. I check her face, her hands and legs for cuts and scrapes. Innocently, she says she is fine. I am cleaning the dirt from her clothes. There is a tear in my eye. I hold her face in my hands and tell her that it is good she is fine and I smile.

Her worried mother reaches us and takes her in her arms. I stand up and see she has dropped that half-knit sweater on the ground. She is kissing her forehead. I go back and pick the sweater up for her.

I want to make sure if what I heard was correct or just my imagination. I ask her, ‘What’s your name?’

Helping her hair behind her ear, exactly in the same way, she says in her cute voice, ‘My name is Khushi.’

I keep staring at her for a while. Her mother looks at me.

I tell her, ‘It’s a beautiful name.’

Then I walk back home.