'The worst part of life is waiting. The best part of it is having someone worth waiting for.'

I am a simple man...with extraordinary tastes...
I always try to give... seldom do I want anything in return for love, care & friendship... yet I am probably the most misunderstood idiot on Earth...
I mean, okay, I'm no Arh-nuld, or even Kevin Sorbo, but I've come a long way, right? Not the way everyone figured I would end up, right? I guess... I guess... no one ends up the way they think they would, huh.
Who am I, you ask? You sure you wanna know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody said it was a happy little tale... if somebody told you that I was just your average, ordinary guy, not a care in the world...
... Then somebody lied.
Mine, is a tale of pain and sorrow, longing and heartache, anger and betrayal. And that just covers the high school years. But let me assure you, this... like any story worth telling... is all about a girl...

Merciless clouds forming a laughing faded face of Cinderella
Emptiness reminding me of the melancholy space.
Why does every clear melody make me want to cry?
When I know myself all my tears have run dry.

With vulnerable blue eyes she always had her hair in a mess
Pain always cuts me deep when I remember her soft velvety caress
I always dreamed of swimming in the pools of her eyes
Now she haunts me with blood stained on the clear skies.

Still breeze whispers her soft moan whenever I'm alone
Her pink gowns and laces remind me that she's gone
I see her figure under every Ebony tree I see.
Who would believe that I had buried her six feet deep.

We all love differently, we all live differently.
We all mourn differently, we all die differently.
I know that someday I will join her
But forgiveness is not what I'll ask from her.

I will never complain cause I'm scared
I love her too much that's why I had dared.
Don't you dare sympathize, don't feel pity
But then maybe you too feel that I am guilty.

Sometimes death is easy and life is difficult.
I'm sure my pain would make even an angel's heart quiver.
Who cares now what happens - my soul lies with hers

My gift of love was eternal - Yes! I had to kill her!

GENESIS:

He was impatiently waiting for his turn. The queue was long. At last, when his chance came a girl pushed him and took his place! The girl seemed arrogant so he just stood fuming. She turned around and he forgot about the painting. She was just about his age (19 days smaller to be precise) and was like a fairy to him. He was supposed to be unfazed by girlish attractions, but this girl had floored him. Love at first sight. I was six years old at that time.

She towered over him poking him in his chest.

"Who do you think you are? Schwarzenegger!"

I promised never to play with her again.

They were making mud cakes. The girl was creative. She decorated the mud with wild flowers and the boy gulped them down like it was a chocolate cake! My mother did not let me go out to play with her even after I recovered from my upset stomach.
They went out to pick unripe mangoes one summer morning and came back home late in the afternoon. His father reprimanded him for getting late and locked him out. She told him to stay with her, in her house ‘forever' as his parents had turned him out. Always a gentleman, I declined politely. Crazy I...

The boy loved white roses. Whenever he gave the girl a white rose, it was instantly returned. His chocolates were returned. He loved the roses too much to throw them away. I still have those roses.

The boy went bonkers whenever he saw her. He tried to gain her attention by doing stunts. He always crashed resulting in a lot of guffaws among the opposite sex. She never laughed. I loved her for that.

He was a possessive lover. He hated it when any other guy talked with or about her. He picked many a fights for her. He hated her discussing about any other boy with him. Goodness gracious! I really was in love with the girl next door. Love thy Neighbour...

When he first came to know that she also liked him. He went blitzkrieg and gave her his first love rose. She gave it to the painter. I still haven't forgiven that painter to have been born on that very day...

It was on New Year's Eve that she gave him a present. I still have that greeting tucked away inside my chronicles.
It broke his heart to know that she would be going away. He cried like a child the day she left. He felt betrayed. My mother scolded me later for not being present at the time that her family left.

He didn't have her snap. He didn't need it. She haunted his thoughts more than he could envisage. To be blunt, I stopped watching dreams which didn't have her.

At first, she sounded flabbergasted that he had remembered her birth day. She realized later that she had called him up nineteen days back to wish him. I still remember her maxim..." jyada acting karne ki koi jaroorat nahin hai..." I treasured her words.

It was the night of 31st of December ,2006, when he decided to tell her about his feelings:
The clock on the wall struck 12:00 and as the world around me went up in revelry, I grabbed my cell. BSNL was screaming ‘Bhai Saab Nahi Lagega', Reliance was trying to act too SMART and Airtel was showing its empty balance. Frustrations mounted as the problems continued. The last resort... the landline!

At 12:25 the call went through and boy I was praying like anything for her mobile to stay switched on!

"Hello!".
The same sultry voice!
"Hiya! Happy New Year...".
"Same to you. Know I was thinking about you now. I was going to call you."
Where do I start...
"See, I wanna tell you something...something important..."
"Yes!"
Help me Cupid!
"I love you!"
Silence! You wouldn't even hear a pin dropping as the pressure mounted.
"!!@@##**#@*@*!*!! You f@**#*...
"I just want your approval!".
"Sorry! I am not the one who decides this. I have my parents and my dad will shoot us if he gets to know this...".
"This isn't my decision! Please, don't make me upset...".
Huh! So early! Already decided!
"Okay! I'm sorry..."
The goddamn battery's running out! Stupid cordless!
"Okay I'll ring back later...".
She's isn't interested...
"Bye."

His heart was broken. ‘The Heart Break Kid's' heart was put in the mixer-grinder by a girl he had loved since she had braces in her teeth and had a flat chest.

EXODUS:

She gave me the impression of a terrified, timorous and reticent girl coming from a pious ‘Roman Catholic' family. Dumpy ‘boy cut' tresses and a cute face... she seemed more like a nun when she walked with her unambiguous strut. Only ‘Blondie' seemed to be fairer than her. She was not the type you would suppose one to stand and ‘eyeball'. I understand that you get what I mean to say.

Oh boy! How erroneous was I? Time and luck seemed to have altered Cinderella quite a bit. When I really took notice of her after more than two years, I was factually bowled over!

Is this the same girl?

No.

I'll better substantiate with Ms.Girija before commenting.

She was indeed the ‘friend' I was looking for. She was missing her trademark bluster, and boy! She was stunning...no...she was drop-dead-gorgeous! And so I gifted her a ‘Temptations' still under the notion of her being a ‘baptized bombshell' !
When this ‘Miss Under Standing' was cleared, I was more blissful. Inadvertently, over the years, I found out to my astonish that I had helped her a lot. Some bloke was after her, it seems, and in a joke, I had told this guy that the girl he was after was the sis of the ‘DIG' of Sindri CPRF camps. You should've seen the guy scoot off to Kolkata by the evening passenger!
Once I had a mirthful dream starring her. It seemed that I was giving her and Ms.Girija the chocolate I have kept for them. And from nowhere ‘Ms.Pallu' breaks-in and snatches the bar form my hands. The dream ended in the ‘Night Queen' and me gnawing to each ends of the bar! I personally would pigeonhole this reverie in ‘HORRORS' ! Envisage me even going near Professor's ‘left-over' ... How sweet would it have been the other way! Me and Cinderella munching each ends of the bar and ending up in the way I wanted... Anyways it was just a dream.

That particular day was delightful. When I asked Jhakkas to take me to this young guy's house to watch how one learns the synthesizer, he promptly agreed and so we went to this bloke's house one cold Sunday morning. Well, a few surprises were indeed waiting for me as the particular house turned out to be Cinderella's house! Okay... I wasn't altogether jumping up and down in happiness as this could have taken an ugly turn. Imagine her, asking her father to kick me out! Thankfully it didn't happen. When I was leaving, I saw a strange sight. A pair of hands clasping the bars and a tiny head snooping out of an open window. It was our desi ‘James Bond' doing some surveillance for his sis. The sight was so comical that I really burst out laughing.

Gawd! Why the hell didn't I talk to her when I met her on Christmas! I always miss out on opportunities. But I pledge you all.

One day ‘The Heart Break Kid' will win Cinderella's heart.

ACTS:

The cell hadn't stopped buzzing since morning. And I was much goaded to find only ‘miss calls' from a particular number. After it was too much, I decided to call back.

Naturally, my heart was praying for the voice at the other end to be that of a girl... And I was not overtly flabbergasted to find that my hunch had been correct!

"Hello, is this Aaryan?"
"No... Where have you called?"
"This is Kolkata...?"
"Wrong number!"
"Okay... Can we be friends...?"
Oh come on... Not again... The image of Tina-‘The girl with a soft voice and pumpkin like body' flashed at the back of my mind. This must be someone from the girl's hostel, I guessed. Half of me was saying to disconnect the call but I continued thinking that this could be fun...
"Ok... But I don't even know you...Where are you now?"
"Durgapur."
Ok... This is going somewhere, I thought.
"...In which college...?"
"Dr. B. C. Roy College of Engineering."
By this time I was leaping up and down as I realized who was trying all these tricks to reach me. I decided to play on as if I was an idiot.
"Ok... I have an old friend in your college!"
"Who?"
"We both are from Dhanbad."
I told her the name.
"O my God! I know her... She is my roommate!"
I started thinking about the nights we had spent talking under the stars...
"So... Do you want to talk to her?"
"Aw... She won't talk to me... I think she is angry..."
I was playing all my cards safely. Never taking the chance if what I was thinking wasn't correct.
"Don't tell her about me... She might feel offended..."
"You care about her so much!!! She has to talk to you. I will ask her to..."
"Ok. Just don't hurt her..."
Now this was overacting, I suppose, but it worked. They say that everything is fair in love and war. So this was alright, I suppose.
"Call back when I give a miss call."
"Ok. Sure..."
I checked my prepaid balance.
8.00 INR.
I sprinted towards the superstore and shelled out two hundred bucks on top-ups.
As I was hiking down the hill, with a spring in my step and a shrill whistle emanating from my lips, the guard glaring at me for disturbing his siesta... my cell phone beeped!
"Hello..."
"Hey... She's here... You talk to her..."
There was a racket and the resonance of a squabble. As if Cinderella didn't want to talk to me...
"Hello."
The voice was cold but still celestial... And my heart skipped a beat as my ears tried to adjust to the supersonic vibes that her sultry voice had produced... I fell in love with her once more...
"Hi... How are you?"
"I am fine..."
"Why didn't you ever contact me after you came to college...? Do you hate me?"
"Yes... I hated you and so I didn't want to talk to you... Had she not seen your number in my slam book and called you... We would not have been talking today..."

For the next hour as she poured out her heart and I my prepaid balance, we decided that it was high time that we became serious about our relationship. It was decided then that I would be changing my GSM service provider and switching over to her network, which would get me cheaper call tariffs and longer gossip epochs.

During lunch, I sent her a text message, which went as follows...
Zindagi guzar gayi ahista ahista.
Phir ye waqt bhi dagmagaya ahista ahista.
Tumne mujhe chaha kuch waqt tak, phir kya ye chahat bhi mit gayi ahista ahista?

Her reply was prompt and asked more questions than it gave answers.
Kya tumko aisa lagta hai?

Then, one rainy night, as we were talking our hearts and minds out, we decided that it was enough... No one in this world could keep us apart. We exchanged vows to stay with each other till we had life in us. She then uttered those three magical words each of us want to hear one day...

"I love you..."

It changed my life. That was the day I really started believing in love.

She then asked me what I would have done had I been with her at that moment.

I replied, "I would have hugged you..."
"And I would have loved it..."
I will never be able to forget those words...

REVELATION:

So... when love was discussed, I had to be there at De Nobili. I was kind of a cult figure when it came to bird watching. Friends used to call me ‘love guru'. No one knew that my own personal love life was screwed. I really thank all the girls who came after me, and the lucky ones who got my attention. Time changes. People change. I too changed.

It is one of the most common and yet most difficult of life's experiences that requires me to re-examine my past and re-define it according to a more adult perspective. Because this is a hard thing to do, I put a fitter, usually of rosy hue, on my memories. My remembrance of things past is sweetened by the passage of time so that my worst gaffes and most embarrassing incidents are so well diluted that they leave no aftertaste. Because of the enchantment generated by the distance, I find it painful to look deeply into the past lest I awaken memories and relationships that I would rather leave undisturbed.
Nostalgia turns my heart warm with longing for those good times, when we had real heroes, reliable faith, predictable weather, ... and the promise of true love.

P.S.:- I was proposed by a girl an year into college, a girl who was from my own batch, a Carmelite. Obviously the way I talked, walked, thought, must've pulled her towards me. She was good looking, intelligent, affectionate. But after all what had happened in the past. I said... NOT AGAIN!

---------

For any question or feedback, please write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it