“Sometimes you have to stop still in order to move on,
Sometimes the songs you hear are just the songs of your own,
Sometimes you can’t be the one to fall apart,
Sometimes you have to pain your body to numb the one in your heart.”
Has it really been ten years?
He turned the question around in his mind for the hundredth time. Outside, the winter sun had long since set, the greyish sheen of fog visible through the window.
Friendship- they say, is a fragile thing, handle with care. But care was the only thing that had always eluded him. He couldn’t see her the second time they met. They were separated by a thick veil, dark as obsidian.
And then again, he couldn’t see the tiny crack that had appeared in their friendship. It had come silently through the shades of time and like a single drop of venom that races down the veins , it had shattered all ties. The glass sculpture bore a gaping hole.
He’d tried to shrug it off, to soldier on manfully- because hey, that was the only thing Robert Frost and seven years in Afghanistan had taught him- Life. Goes. On.
He still remembers her laugh, her high-pitched voice that used to chatter so cheerfully, about her dreams about ‘their’ future. Their.
As a child, Kabir was THE bad boy of their middle-class neighborhood. Always the one to get into fights and brawls, the first one out in the streets during Holi, the first guy to yell around celebrating another of India’s thrashing of Pakistan.
Aditi was not his opposite. Hell, this isn’t one of those clichéd good-girl-falls-for-bad-boy type sappy romances. Rather, she was his partner-in-crime. With three piercings in each ear and a shocking red bandanna, she was the sort of girl parents warned their children to steer clear of.
He remembered the time they had sneaked up to Mahesh uncle’s house to pinch laddoos. She had clutched his hand and said, “Don’t leave me if we get caught.”
“Nah”, He’d replied with an arrogant smirk, “I’ll marry you and hitch you along.”
The next day they had both fallen sick from a laddoo overdose.
Kair went off to join the army when he was eighteen. The locality was relieved. His visits to his parents, thrice a year were not looked forward to. Kabir’s parents died a couple of years later, and his visits stopped altogether.
The bad boy of the para was gone. With newer thugs baring their fangs, the bad boy legend of the neighborhood crawled into a tiny hellhole to die a quiet death.
He came back though, exactly three years later, with a limp replacing the spring in his step, and an inexplicable hollowness usurping the glimmer in his eyes.
Aditi had had her own generous share of misfortunes. She’d been through a failed marriage- with her in-laws brutally punishing her for the double-D crimes –too little dowry and too many daughters.
With her two daughters she had come back to her father’s house, and here’s where she met Kabir again. She had never thought that they’d meet again. Because hey, this sort of reunions- meeting your childhood….. love after all these years, it happens only in movies and fairy tales, and the tomboy in her thirties knew that whatever her life might have been, it was certainly not a fairy tale.
Fate had smiled at her. Not the kind, generous type. But the one your enemy has when he knows he has trapped your heart- just a little force and it’ll break again. She got back Kabir and that year itself- on Dussera, her father bid this world a sad goodbye.
I know what you’re thinking- what the hell? Is this story all about death? Man this is so so depressing.
My friend here’s the truth- Life is nothing more than a sugar-coated lie. A bitter pill, that reeks of poison and invariably kills you in the end.
In the fading light of dusk, he tightly held on to her as they stood before the funeral pyre, his other hand clasping the four-year old Aisha. Little Zara was fast asleep in her mother’s arms, blissfully unaware of the teardrops falling on her face. The four of them were standing together. Everything had felt so right right then. But all Kabir could see was an endless ocean of black. The light of this world had long since left his eyes.
He knew he couldn’t be the one to fall apart. He had to stop his tears because he had to wipe hers. He couldn’t show his emotions because someone stupid had once said-“Boys don’t cry.”
Aditi did not stay for long either. Leaving four-year old aisha and ten months old Zara in his hands, she too took her leave. Leukemia, she knew she had it coming.
And there she was- a member of the stars. The miracle he kept hoping for never really arrived. Ten years have passed since then.
He exhaled and looked out of the window. A storm was brewing. Winds blew hard, someone hit a six in the alley- for the sound of breaking glass was preceded by cheers and followed by neighboring auntie’s ear-splitting yells. Earlier, he used to be on the receiving side.
The ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. The dull throb in his chest was starting to become a permanent ache. He opened a drawer and pulled out a yellowed, well-thumbed sheet of paper and began reading for the umpteenth time.
He laid the letter on the desk. His throat ached, making it difficult to breathe. The overhead light was making a strange prism of his unbidden tears. Composing himself, he started again.
In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane; sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But they often do bring a future that is impossible to ignore.
I was wrong. Wrong, to ignore what was obvious. Like a cautious
traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead.
I was a fool to let you go, for in the evenings when a storm came raging and Aisha used to cry, I wanted you to be the one holding us tightly together.
When Ved died, I wanted you to be the one comforting me. Is it possible that you know how I feel without you? When I dream, I like to think you do.
We were destined to be together.
But alone in my house, I have come to realize that destiny can also hurt a person, and I wonder why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who went far far away. If this letter ever finds you Kabir, just know that I have and will always love you.
She gave him something he’d treasure forever. Sighing, he looked into the window panes, and from the misty reflections- Aditi’s eyes stared back at me.
