CHAPTER 6. THE LOVE CURVES
Autumn had filled the air with shades of yellow; there were red and yellow dry leaves sprayed all over the place. Mahreen and I would walk for countless moments silently on the side walk of a deserted road, crushing those dry leaves under our feet and listening to that melodic sound. I never told her I loved her, I never had to; she knew everything I had, my time, my words, my eyes, everything was for her.
“No one will ever care about me as much as you have, as much as you do” she said so slowly, I could hardly hear it.
“Why do you say this? It sounds like you won’t be there for me to care for all my life” I would register a soft protest.
“I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you this” she would say with a childish smile on her otherwise serious face.
“Don’t think like that; I am here and I have no where else to go” I would assure her with a smile.
She would smile back and we would continue walking silently on the crackling leaves on the concrete.
I had never loved anyone in my life but her; from the very first moment I saw her to the moment she one day walked up to me and asked me about a book; I had fallen for her like an autumn leaf, ready to spend my time walking beside her on the sidewalks. I never really knew if she loved me or not, be it for a moment or two, I just never knew. May be if I had told her I loved her, she would have told me so too but I never did because that she already knew. She liked me for sure; she said so herself many a times but that was just a little less than what I wanted.
We hardly ever talked openly about ourselves; there were always some curved conversations that would clear the path ahead.
“Last night I was listening to the cassette you gave me” she would say.
“Yeah!” I would shorten my response to listen to her more.
“What are you trying to say?” she would give me a charming look and ask with a tinge of smile.
“Well, I think you heard that” I would say with an equal touch of smile.
“It said something like… In the night of a strayed moon, sleeplessness will remain awake in your open eyes” she would repeat the first lines of a song.
“So you stayed awake that means” I would tell her by asking the question.
“Not really, I fell a sleep while the song was still on” she would teasingly say and then laugh her soft laughter.
I laughed with her knowing she had been thinking about me last night.
Every good thing always carries an element of fear with it; the fear of something bad happening, the fear of the end to the good thing. And sometimes you are too busy looking at the good thing from so close that you lose sight of the mist that surrounds you and your life. I never knew what Gulzar meant when he said;
Nazdeek se kuch bhi tau dikhai nahin deta
Thori si alag ho tau terey chehrey ko dekhoon
But I was soon to find out the meanings of this.
Things were falling apart but I was too busy loving her that I didn’t have time for anything less perfect. She had changed her worlds, there was some other cosmic dust engulfing her life. She told me she had to go; I thought she wanted to go as well. I let her go and promised myself to keep all the distance in the world from any acquaintance I was ever to make.
And I did just that.
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