Truly Madly Deeply (11 page)

Almost suddenly, she kicked him and pushed him so hard that he fell down ten feet away from her apparition.

“You, insensitive moron! After all that you did, do you still seriously consider that you're made for me,” the hazy Seema accused.

“I Love you a lot Seema,” he cried, hauling himself up, speaking her almost divine name.

She glowered at him, with baleful eyes, suggestive of an
abhorrent heart.

“How can you even think of me? You don't deserve me you buffoon, have you ever seen yourself in the mirror? Do you know I'm a Princess and you a pauper?” she cackled aloud like a hyena.

A tremendous anguish gripped him as the lines of strain around his mouth deepened. He tried to ignore the pain, tried not to give in to the shock and terror but it suddenly exploded through his limbs. He held his head in his hands but it throbbed along with his heartbeats. He held his bent back but the pain continued shaking his body and then he touched his nearly immobile heart.

‘PAUPER! BEGGAR! PAUPER!' the words echoed in his mind.

Suddenly, he snapped his eyes open. The vision he had seen
seconds ago was still unclear but he faintly remembered what it
was about.

Rahul put on his jacket and decided to take a stroll in the park, behind the hostel. He had missed school today as after a long time something close to proper sleep had visited him in early in the morning and then he had woken up with the same nightmare, fearing to shut his eyes again. Locking the door behind him, he descended the stairs one at a time, still remembering her every reaction to his crude actions, still worshipping the frown on her face when he said he loved her. Love, he told himself, was open to interpretation like any other abstract indulgence but followed the same principles everywhere, irrespective of everything else. One, either won or lost in love, there was no bridge in between, and he decided he had lost, lost to himself, if not to her.

He took a right from the end of the lane to arrive at a small park that very few people visited. For some reason, he could strike a chord with the neglected park. Sometimes he would move out of the hostel in the middle of the night and occupy that park till morning. The silence was strangely comforting. The park was covered in a blanket of white, the hint of darkness just setting in as the cold sun was engulfed by the clouds. The leaves of the Acacia trees rustled as if discussing his doom amongst themselves.

The hostel inmates had been warned against going out alone during the early mornings and the late evenings, perhaps due to the increasing number of racial attacks in the area but Rahul did not care, he did not have anything on him except her thoughts, except the good times he had once shared and the bad times, he so desperately wanted to forget. Isolation, for him, had become a basic sine qua non for existence and loneliness, his sole companion like a perfectly faithful twin. He was someone for whom even happiness would cry for, mourning the death of his sentiments and murdering the existence of his soul.

While moving his hand to involuntarily scratch a mosquito bite on his thigh, he brushed something in the pocket of his long coat. He sighed at the touch and rummaged in his pocket to discover a virgin packet of Marlboro. Reaching out for the lighter in the other pocket, he lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke into his lungs and held it there for a long time before releasing it in the cold air.

He was not like this, he had never smoked but then had he ever loved? Life made him love and love made him smoke. He still remembered how he had reprimanded a few of his friends in his locality, for purchasing a packet of cigarettes to try them out for fun, during a first-smoker's meet in the secluded square behind the parking lot in his colony.

“Here, you also try,” a guy named Ganesh had offered a long stick to him.

“It's Gudangaram yaar, nothing like the regular, this one's sweet and flavoured!” another one called Wasim had said.

“No thanks, you people continue if you have so much of a requirement to poison yourselves and die soon,” he had said before walking off. He had never talked to them since that incident.

Sitting cross-legged on the dull grey bench today, Rahul casually eyed the smoke that escaped his lips and became prominent in the air around him. He saw the smoke take shape; the shoulder cropped, curly brown hair with the round pretty face, the small pouty lips containing those perfectly placed unsullied dents. He rushed ahead to hold the apparition in his open arms but the smoke escaped from his outstretched fingers and merged with the atmosphere around him. With a cry of despair, he fell down back onto the bench, throwing away the stubbed cigarette in the snowy grass. His life was as directionless as the whiff of smoke which left the lit end of the discarded cigarette.

“Ahem-Ahem,” a voice behind him sounded.

He turned slowly to see Sahil watching him intently.

“What are you doing here at this time?” he fired.

“Don't you think I should be the one asking the same thing?” Sahil argued back.

Rahul sighed and reclined his head on the bench as Sahil sat down beside him.

“Mom's out to grandma's home in New Jersey. I didn't see you at school today, so I called up at the hostel but came to know you're not in your room. Hence, I came down...”

Rahul grunted.

He had been to New Jersey only once when he was just a week away from joining the school here. His uncle had taken him along, to acquaint him with the place. It had been a little soothing to drive by the Tacony-Palmyra bridge in his uncle's Chevrolet, watching the sun disappear down the waters of the Delaware River as little boats with triangular sails cruised smoothly. He still remembered the orange sky that evening, beautiful yet unwelcoming. It was as if he did not belong there, so alien was the land, so strange its people. A sense of foreboding had gripped him on his first outing in this land and it had grown till he tried to fight his own horrors.

“There's this surprise Algebra test tomorrow.” Sahil broke his thoughts.

Rahul looked at him with a hint of surprise.

“I had visited the staffroom for some work in the afternoon and I saw Prof. Quinn working on a question paper. I could just about make out our grade and set in a corner. Anyways, sitting at home, I was as bored as a nun in an orgy and hence I had to inform you, thought you'd like it, not that you need it ... ”

With a rigid lift of his shoulders, Rahul tilted his head back to study Sahil's face. He nodded reluctantly. It was the closest he could come to thanking him.

He offered him a cigarette from his pocket but Sahil declined.

“This is not a safe place you know, especially now that it's
getting dark.”

Rahul ended up giving him a questioning glance instead of the attempted glare.

“Some say there was a graveyard here and they destroyed it, to create this place. Others say that the park is haunted by the ghost of a young lover who had hung himself from a tree... ”

Rahul grinned mockingly at him. What was the difference, he thought? Here he was – another doomed young lover – just
barely alive.

“If I had a choice, I wouldn't be here… I wouldn't be anywhere,” Rahul said to none in particular.

For a second, Sahil widened his eyes, hearing the manner in which Rahul spoke but thought it better to continue.

“Oh, stop talking like that. It feels weird,” Sahil said.

“You'll know what's weird when you fall in love. Other than that, nothing is mysterious in this world,” Rahul said.

“Haha, no love dove for me,” Sahil laughed.

Rahul regarded him with his penetrating stare and Sahil shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

‘How similar was I! Sometimes I see myself in him, the same stupid, immature guy,' Rahul thought.

“I'm sorry for opening your diary that day. I never got a real chance to apologise,” Sahil said, not meeting his eye.

Rahul nodded after a second long pause.

“If I can ask you one thing...”

Rahul sighed looking away, giving a permissible movement of
his head.

“Going by the looks of it, you both shared a beautiful relation, then where did it go wrong?” Sahil bit his lip anxiously.

Rahul turned to stare at him with such a force that Sahil almost toppled over, but a sudden chilling sensation ran through his spine and he looked down again to see the smoke from the stubbed cigarette. Something stirred, something called and after a long pause, for the first time Rahul emptied the regrets of his heart.

Therefore I think my breast hath all

Those pieces still, though they be not unite;

And now as broken glasses show

A hundred lesser faces, so

My rags of heart can like, wish and adore,

But after one such love, can love no more.”

-The Broken Heart, John Donne.

She was a beautiful girl, my Seema. Almost worshipped by guys in school and in the area where we lived but she was quite humble. Sometimes people mistook her shy nature as arrogance. Intelligent, smart and homely were tags one could associate with her perfectly. She had never stepped down from the numero uno position when it came to her studies.

I was no less. Being the apple of everyone's eye and the spark of my batch, I topped every exam, crossed every hurdle on my way. Be it sports or academics, I was a champion in both. Not meaning to sound boastful, I can just about say that half the trophies that decked the achievement showcase of my school during my stay, were my doings. I was not as popular as her in the area but everyone wanted a piece of me in school. My popularity in the area started to grow manifold for all the wrong reasons. Most guys my age started feeling jealous of me and started using me as their punching bag in their dreams once they got an inkling of whom I was dating. I didn't care. For me, she was my happiness. I tried to be hers.

We were our only competition, beating our own records as each unit passed. We both complemented each other not just physically, except for our heights but also with the talent pool we shared between us. I would blush the deepest shade of purple, when my friend, Raj would tell me that our kids would be Einsteins reborn.

“You know your full name and hers, both have eleven letters each,” Raj informed his observations excitedly one evening.

“Hmmm… Rahul Kapoor and Seema Tandon... Oh God, yes!” I shouted excitedly. It was akin to the discovery of life on other planets for me.

“Why are you changing colour like a chameleon?” Raj asked, observing again.

Oh, he was too observant, my little friend. He could not understand her position in my life but he could very well make out that I liked her; at least as much as the heroines in the mushy Bollywood romances we saw those days.

***

I curse myself today for failing to realise her value in my life. It seems so long and distant today, that sometimes I wonder whether it happened for real. But no, I look in the mirror and all my doubts are answered. Shakespeare said,

“If thou remember'st not the slightest folly,

That ever love did not make thee run into,

Thou hast not loved.”

It was not one folly that Shakespeare talked about. If Love truly is but a myriad of follies then I have committed them all, that means only one thing – I loved her truly.

When I stand in front of a mirror, I see my reflection, bruised and battered, the injuries not showing to the mortal eye. I comb my unruly hair sometimes before leaving for school and seeing my image I curse it for being so naive. I reprimand it for not saying the right things to me that time, for not showing me this picture of myself during that period when the devil possessed me.

The Rahul in the mirror then argues back that he had indeed told me that I was not doing the right thing, and then I remember suppressing those weak, feeble voices that arose within me, bringing down my elation. But then, I had wanted that high epitomising feeling more than this bleak pin-poking sentiment and hence,
I had dismissed the internal guilt for inner jealousy. I was the dude after all, I thought, I was the person whose own conscience was
jealous of me.

Thinking about it all, I scold the Rahul in the mirror for not being too powerful but the arrogant reflection stays adamant in maintaining its stand.

‘When you were too weak to hold your own love, how do you expect me to be powerful? After all, I reside within you.' It says and then I have nothing to reply but stare into myself and watch my reflection dissolve into nothingness.

Sometimes I wonder whether I am going mad but then I realise I have always been like this. It's just the love for her in my heart that is morphing into this madness and how can I run away from it? Sometimes I want to when I can't bear it anymore, but where will I go?

And where did this madness start, you may ask me next and even I fail to remember when I changed from a soft, caring lover to an insensitive, selfish brat.

***

“I had gone to watch Khan's latest blockbuster film alongwith Naazneen at PVR. We had so much fun…,” Ashfaque, the guy who often sat beside me in class said one day. I was not able hear him further.