Eternal love

The morning was beautiful. She woke up early even before the alarm clock started ringing. A miracle.Usually it woke up her neighbors before it did her with the continuous music. She always made the alarm as  part of the background  of her dream. This deafness to alarms resulted in her getting up late every day.  

This day was different. She could feel it in the soft freshness of the morning air. From the balcony, she viewed the morning air with surprise. Could this be the day when he would come to her? She had a lot of intuition about these things and felt hopeful. 

She couldn’t believe that this is the same city crowded with protesters over something over the other in the daytime. The white building of the state looked lovely this morning. Not even a single sound. 

She stood there for sometime.  She heard the hooting of a distant train. What silence. Only a few people like the newspaper boys moved here and there. She decided to go on a morning walk. She changed her clothes and was out walking in a few minutes.

It was not yesterday that he left the city. She didnt know here he was.  If he was here, she will see him on the morning walk across the park. What all things I want to tell you, my dear? But the situation was not as hopeless as she made it to be. 

He was just a phone call away. But what prevented her was her shyness, what if they become lovers? She couldn’t face him. Still she resolved to tell him how much he means to her, that not a day passes without his thoughts and that she would do anything to have him in her life even as a friend. 

It was this obsession, that feeling that there was something between them that was unique, something that happened only once in a lifetime, that magic that will never happen again if she lost him.She knew that from the first day that she met him, that there was something about him that she loved beyond words, through her silences.

Memories came and visited her. What was this madness that never let her spend a day without thinking about him? Every day was like this-thoughtfulness, indecisiveness and finally sobbing just before going to sleep, hugging the pillow. Night time was for writing down what all preposterous things he meant to her, while morning took all these thoughts away. 

Obsessed with him, she felt that this came out of her denial of some natural feeling towards him. At times, she had this gut feeling that it was mutual; he also felt the same. But then what?

Even that day in the rain was evidence to this. They were sitting in that coffee shop sipping hot coffee when she said in half jest" let’s walk in the rain". Before she could even think, he’d got up and was out in the rain. There was another couple who walked before them, hugging each other closely and for a moment she wanted to walk with him like that.

"Look at them", she said. They shied away from each other thought they were closely aware of each other. That night, she was a little crazy as she wrote about those little things in her diary. Suddenly, her phone rang. Strangely it was not him but her fiancé, who had called.

“What happened to you? You don’t speak soft to me anymore? You speak like a stranger, nowadays”. She knew that she didn’t do this deliberately, for her fiancé meant the world to her. Five years is not a short period of time and with every passing year and the distance that separated them, they had stuck together supporting each other everyday. 

On days of idleness, he would call her and ask her to study for her exams, for which they were appearing together. That exam meant a lot to both of them. Now both are lost and that too because of her foolishness. She could understand losing her new friend or obsession but her fiancé that was like saying drawing a boundary can make land into two nations. 

Still this morning she felt hopeful. Her life would have an answer, not this endless maze of problems, coming one after the other. She couldn’t call him and ask him to come and meet her. May be a real meeting can cure her obsession. It made her nervous, the thought of meeting him. 

She dreaded even that thought but that’s what she always wanted to do. Each and every day, she wanted this meeting, this resolution of her confusions but nothing happened. She went and sat at her favourite place in the park, on the stone-bench beneath that chempaka tree. The flowers gave off an intoxicating fragrance. Her phone rang. Her fiancé.

“Why are you not talking to me? You remember this date. This was the day when I proposed to you way back in college. What has come over you?”
“So? She asked.
“With marriage in December, how can you be playing such games?”.

“What if I don’t want to marry you?”
“Now dear, please be careful. If that’s what you wish, it’s fine with me. But what about the parents? What are you going to tell them?”
“That I will do, you don’t have to worry”.

While she was talking, she saw someone familiar walking towards her. That was him. She cut the phone and ran towards him. “Where were you? I was worried!”He smiled and put his arms around her. She was sobbing so hard. She couldn’t control herself. He  held her close. He moved his face close to hers and kissed her. First kiss. 

All her desperation was gone. The agony over whether she will meet him or not, the pain of his absence and her repressing her all feelings, everything was gone. He took her on a long drive in the city before driving to the beach far from the city. She chatted about all the things that had happened in his absence.“Where do you want to go now? He asked her.“The beach. I love the seashore, though it makes me serious about life”, she replied. 

He smiled and kissed her again. She responded fully to his desires and glowed in his love. “Don’t go anywhere again”, she pleaded. At the beach, they stayed in the water, hand in hand. The evening sky was tinted red. The ochre light of the evening, with that secluded beach made him daring enough to kiss her in the open. 

“I love you baby. I will never leave you alone”, he said. He led her to towards the sea, into the deeper waters. Now she became afraid. He hugged her tight and laughed aloud with each thrashing wave that splashed against them.  

She decided to speak to her parents when she got home. Her marriage could wait; she wanted to be sure herself whom was that she loved more, her fiance or the one whom she found anew. It was her dream come true and she thought that she did choose right.Looking at the lights, what she felt was that this was a very special day of her life.