Short Love Story – Back From The Other Side
Photo credit: Oleander from morguefile.com
The night grew dark and the weather grew mean, when he sneaked into her room and stood, unnoticed. He walked up to her sleeping form and stared for a minute or two. As he did so, a tear rolled down his face; the same face everyone but she, had forgotten. He had been dead for 20 years now; 20 long years he had waited for this day. The woman who lay sleeping in front of him was none other than his wife; a wife, he had vowed to take care of, all those years back.
He remembered the time when they had first stepped into the house together, young and hopelessly in love, having neither worries nor anticipation of the turbulent times that keenly awaited them. For the first few years they were inseparable; but as time went by, reality struck. As cruel and unforgiving reality can ever be, one day, he asked her for divorce. This shook her terribly and immediately she broke down into tears; he was too proud and furious, at that time, to even console her. The divorce was never meant to be taken seriously; in his gesture, he had only used it to win a silly argument.
But little he knew, she had already begun to despise him for it and all the efforts, on her part, towards saving the marriage, were not for the sake of love but, for the sake of reputation. Later, he had felt bad about his actions that night and had, on numerous times, tried to approach her and love her, the way he truly loved. But there still existed the delusional pride and the fear of shame that stopped him every time and the only thing he managed to do was to give her signs he wanted the marriage to end soon.
One day, she came up to him and said, ‘What happened to us, Manish? Why did we even get married? It is so evident that you don’t love me and that had, gradually, forced my love for you to reduce. When we were young and in love, we were so blissful and idiotic; we both made promises to each other that can’t possibly be fulfilled.’
She broke down crying on his shoulder after saying this and he held her in his arms and hugged her tight.
He said, ‘But, I do love you, Aparajita. I have loved you every single day of my life and each day, more than the previous one. Even when we had had a quarrel and I had said something harsh to you, being angry and furious, I had had, later, only you as an afterthought and had loved the picture of you that I always carry with me: you know the one I talk about. Many a days have passed, when I had thought of walking up to you and to hold you tight; loving you, then, the way I truly feel about you, without even uttering a single world. But, fear of rejection had consumed me every single time and my thoughts had only gone as far as walking right past you.’
That day, for the first time, truth was spoken; the truth, every person on this planet seems so unaccustomed to listen or speak. But, that day, truth spilled out, and with it spilled out his love for her and her love for him. But, love is something that is easily envied and here, it was envied by the mighty god of death.
Two years later, he died in a car accident while he was on his way home; this left his wife, a widow and a mother of a one year old daughter. This short trip down the memory lane came to an end, when suddenly his sleeping wife shook herself awake. She looked at him directly, as if she had actually seen him. Her heart raced, and his did too.
He was now vanishing into thin air once again, as he muttered the words, ‘I will always love you, Aparajita’, almost in vain.
Whether she heard it and or not, he doesn’t know, but, just when he was watching her, perhaps for the last time, he heard her say, ‘I still love you, Manish. Please come back.’
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