Thousand Times Over

It is the morning time and Arunima is sitting with a cup of steaming coffee in her hand, the newspaper in the other and as she’s reading through it, a smile stole across her lips. She starts walking towards the balcony and a gentle, cold and soothing breeze greets her, with the novelty of this new phase of her life welcoming with arms wide open. It has been three days since it all happened when she confessed her feelings over the phone. Amidst all this, suddenly, the flight of her imagination lands her on the boulevard of dreams. All the memories flutter like the pale pages of an old book.

She could not remember the exact moment when she started acknowledging his presence. Forever maybe, her heart suggested. All the moments are still captured beautifully in her mind. If you ever have been in love, then you must know the feeling. It’s just like thousands of butterflies trying to flee from your stomach. You lose control over your heartbeat, daydreaming seems to be the best time pass, thinking of all the things you would do together with that special one. Even the most stupid of things seems to be reasonable. Well, being in love is quite parallel to being high, just like on some nth excited state of the hydrogen atom. And when that special one is exactly as one’s incarnation, you are at the doorstep of an alternate reality. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and urge them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism.

It was the quest of finding the true selves that linked them together. Two broken hearts, experiencing failures, in need of a listening ear and the frequency of their emotions just matched instantly.

Born in a traditional family of Rajasthan, Ashok had no other option but to succumb to the circumstances. Whenever we talk about change, we know what makes it really tough for us is, on the one hand, we’ve got tradition, and on the other hand, we’ve got change. Tradition, however, in a country like India, even in recent times, have the upper hand. Even when child marriages are believed to be over in the era of 90’s, Ashok was married to Nivedita at the tender age of 12. What may happen next is no mystery, two teenagers with confused emotions but mutual respect for each other did not foresee the outcomes of their ignorant acts. While laboring for their first child, Nivedita took her last breath at the amateur age of 14, leaving the struggle, to live & face the society, of to her husband and daughter.

There goes a saying that there’s an end to every storm. Once when all the trees have been uprooted and when all the houses have been ripped apart, the wind will hush, the clouds will part, the rain will stop, the sky will clear in an instant and only then, in those quiet moments after the storm, do we learn who was strong enough to survive it. For Ashok thought, there were only two ways to live, either change or get left behind. A person like him decided to live by his own faith, he traveled on his own path and adopt the changes he thought were befitting for him & her daughter. And he was happy today for he did not care that the voyage would be valiant or silent; he just kept sailing for reaching where he is today.

On the other hand, Arunima has been leading a plain & simple life. The only missing dot on her perfect life was her mother. She truly believes that the death of her mother has made her the way she was today. She was mentally strong, determined, strong-willed, self-reliant, and independent. She also kept most of her pain, anger, and feelings inside. She refused to be vulnerable to anyone. The only person who sees that more emotional or softer side of her is Ashok. The only unsung eerie of her heart that hankers to echo through him is that she never knew the biggest day of her life was the biggest day. Not until it was happening. Generally, we don’t recognize the biggest day of our lives. Not until we’re right in the middle of it. The day we commit to something or someone, the day we get our heart broken, the day we meet our soul mate or the day we realize there’s not enough time because we want to live forever. Those are the biggest days, the happiest and the perfect days. And somewhere in-between the days of infancy, she met the only known stranger she will ever know, Ashok.

She ponders what would the games she played in her earlier days have been that entertaining if he wouldn’t have joined? Had she been able to handle her first bleed of nature if he would not have sat down with her and make her understand? Would she have been so serious about her life it didn’t mean to him? Would the makeover of this flat to home have been that fulfilling is he might have not helped? Would that night have not been much lonelier if he might have not joined for a cup of tea to share that loneliness?

She still remembers that how unusual they were. She used to get on his nerves with her silly habits, but then his smile and wisdom were there to correct her. He has been a silver lining in the dark clouds. There was a time during a school trip when she fell seriously ill and it was him that walked down miles in that horrifying heat of Ajmer to search for the doctor, toiling hard along with the harshness of weather.

From cutting each other’s hair to hiding each other’s clothes, from fighting over a chocolate to gifting each other with whatever they can think of, from barbies to honeybees, from waking up to sleeping back, from working to sorting, from listening to talking, from being busy to being idle almost everything started to seem mesmerizing when they were together. Ashok has been a friend, a roommate, a companion, a mother, a brother, her partner in crime, whatever you name him, hardly matters and she can’t imagine a life without him and him without her.

They both did not want to be caught in the cobweb or the turmoil of giving the name to the resonance of their matching frequencies because matters of the heart are always way too twisted. They just wanted to be the way it was and thus only the instincts became their torch bearer. They were both in the pursuit of our own destinations, known to the fact, that knowingly or unknowingly their divergent paths were going to converge rather sooner or later. Wondering why?

Arunima is Ashok’s only daughter, the only asset he has in his life and the only man she had in her life. But they both fear, not that they are not sure of their feelings, but the society.

He never wanted his kiddo growing up afraid to tell him the things. She drank? Okay. She smoked? Okay. She was struggling? Okay. That’s alright. He wanted her to be able to talk to him without feeling like she’s going to be punished so that she doesn’t end up feeling alone and keeping things to her. He wanted her to feel safe opening up to him without fear or judgment. When it’s hard to trust anyone these days he wanted her to know that he is there, even when her mother has left her.

But sometimes emotions are way beyond the control. Somewhere between being her father and mother both, the normal human boundaries got blurred. When did the feeling of love evolved between them, even they don’t know? And when that day she confessed her sense of belongingness, of her intense love for Ashok, he was scared. He was well aware of Oedipus Rex. One of the saddest lessons of history is this: we’ve been bamboozled long enough and we’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. Over the period of time the superstition of a culture like India grow on to become a habit and the older the civilization; the greater the superstition. Marriage is a gamble in India. He reasoned.

But then how can he lie to himself. He too had the same feelings for her. What he was concerned about was the apathetic society. He wanted time, time to get the balance of mind and heart, time to clear out his thoughts. And so that day he left her without any answer.

Although their relationship has taken a different course since her confession, they always used to wonder what will the power of words exist if there is no silence. Sometimes silence is underrated but it can often be the best answer. They understood the silence of each other as if we talked in vibrations. The funny part of it, they named it as a ‘4G connection’. She knew what he was supposed to speak and he knew what she was supposed to hear but the words did not matter. Only the feelings did.

But today was different, the silence was deafening. She knew what he was scared of. She wanted to scream to the world that we forget to acknowledge the simple things in our lives that give us immense pleasure. That redefines the love. Love is not about sex, going on fancy dates, or showing off. It’s about being with a person who makes you happy in a way that nobody else can. Whether that person is her father, she did not care! She was tempted to say that there are no little things in romance, too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring – all of which have the potential to turn around the life.

Tired of speculations and retrospections, she willed herself to not check her phone to see if he had replied. It had been about three days now. She hated that she was constantly checking his ‘last seen at’ status and yes, he had logged in just five minutes ago. Yet she couldn’t stop herself. This sinking feeling to find absolutely no communication from him was becoming unbearable, almost torturous.

And then, just as she sat down in her chair, her phone vibrated. With her heart thudding in her ear, she unlocked her phone and stared at the screen. Finally! It was his message. But when she opened it and read it, she nearly stopped breathing. She didn’t know if he was joking or not.

What was this? He has written a long message. And she started reading the message, her heartbeat stopped, she expected this but not the way it was written out.

“PS- (PreScript) Serious questions owe long answers ;)”

“Whenever something new happens, people call it a ‘revolution’ in the perspective of history and only it’s at the later stage that they realize its importance and appreciates its significance in their respective lives. A running man cannot change his direction, all of a sudden, on his own. In physics, we refer to it as Inertia. We know very well that if we change in one sense or the other, it will be so natural for the society to talk about us. What is important is that we should never stop believing that we can have a new beginning. Instead of fearing it, shrug off and feel good about it. Changes always have something special stored for us. And this time I am pretty sure, let’s explore our little infinity together.”

And here’s one dirty little secret I tell you. We would have to realize that it is during the times we will be far outside our element that we’ll experience ourselves the most. That we will see and feel who we really are, the most! Just like what a comet is like, you see, a comet is born in the outer realms of the universe! But it’s only when it ventures too close to our sun or to other stars that it releases the blazing “tail” behind it and shoots brazen through the heavens! And meteors become sucked into our atmosphere before they burst like firecrackers and realize that they’re shooting stars! That’s why we should enjoy taking ourselves out of our own element, our own comfort zone, and hurling ourselves out into the unknown. Because it’s during those scary moments, those unsure steps are taken, that we’ll be able to see that we are like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly we will illuminate magnificently and fire dust will begin to fall off of us! We’ll discover a smile we didn’t know we had, we’ll uncover a feeling that we didn’t know existed in ourselves. We’ll see ourselves that we’re a shooting star. That’s where the pursuit might take us.