Rudra Pratap Ranawat - The Man Who Lived - OS
31st July, 2015 - 12.00 AM - 30th Birthday
My dearest Paro,
It’s 12.00 AM and I think you’ve forgotten my birthday again, right. I know you’re hiding away conspiring with Maithali and think I don’t know. You’ll come in any moment now and wish me ” Janamdin Mubarak Major Saab” and smile shyly at me .
But you don’t enter..
My Amavas has begun!
I still wish for You. Vaapas Aa.
31st July,2016 - 12.00 AM - 31st Birthday
Another year gone by.
I’m no more Major Saab. No more in the BSD.
Kya Fayda Tha Vahan Rehne Se. Maare Chuhiya mere paas nahin hai! (What was the point of staying there? I couldn’t save you inspite of it) Acha, I shall not cry. See, I’m smiling!
Our thingu has grown now . He’s walking. And he has said his first word “Imli”.
Not Bapusa. Imli. Yeh kaisa Ladka hai.
Parrooo, reh nahin Sakta tumhare bina. Par khoshish Kar raha hoon. (Paro, I can’t live without you. But I am trying)
Life wasn’t supposed to be like this. So empty. So dull .
It was déjà vu all over again.
But this time it hurt 100 times more.
Here he was on the crux of his 35th birthday and he felt tired. Tired of living. He hid it well and the days were bearable. It was the nights. The nights which were horrible . The nights where he , at times, cried himself to sleep.
And on his birthday eve , it was the worst! Everyone remembered it now. There was a party, but it never compared to that day when they forgot it! When She had planned it all!
He hated this feeling. He hated feeling. He hated being without her. He hated raising their child without her . He hated not being told off by her. He hated her not being there coaxing him to eat or drink his tea.
He refused to wear those leather jackets again. And he sold his motorbike. They belonged to a different time . To a different man.
He hated not being told off for wearing the same worn out Kurtas. He couldn’t remember the last time he wore one now.
Being alive without the reason of your existence was worse than being dead, he reckoned!
He was left back. Alone .
But then, he looked at the person next to him. The same curve of the cheek , those same eyes, that smiling mouth, and he began to feel hope again.
His Parvati had never gone. She would never go away.
How could she when their love and their fates were intertwined since childhood. Theirs was a love which could dare God and still stay strong. This was what She always told him.
And Paro was never wrong.
He remembered what Maasa had told him about love.
Love Isn’t A Well That Dries Up. Love is like the ocean. If we have lost someone, then we should find someone else to give our love to
And that’s what he was doing. What he was trying to do.
He watched as the child tossed and turned in the bed. As he smiled in his sleep.
His own star. His own sense of light in these stormy days.
She was there in Dhruv. In his behaviour. In his walk. In his smile.
Life was filled with thorns, but even admist all the thorns, one finds the most beautiful flower of all.
And just for today, Rudra was content with that.
