LLC02:TRUE LOVE NEVER DIES

I sat beside the window looking aimlessly at the trees down the street. Suddenly my grandmother coughed. I hurriedly handed her a glass of water and sat beside her and asked “How are you feeling now?”

She replied “Wonderful, as always”.

My grandmother was down with high fever for the last two weeks and the doctor had warned us that if she didn’t showed any signs of getting better. I was too weak to accept the face,i loved her a lot. We were like friends. She even referred to me as her ‘alter ego’ and i was proud to be one.

I said,”Its a beautiful day. Lets talk about something.” I carelessly said”Tell me about your first love grandma!”

It was then that the smile on her face grew wider and her face shone resplendently. She replied “You will be amused to hear it was not certainly your grandfather” and we giggled.

But that afternoon i had to leave for Chicago to attend an important conference ,so i told my grandmother that i would hear her story when i return back after three days. It was quite painful for me to leave her but i was compelled my office.

I returned after two days only to find that my grandma’s condition was critical and she would soon breath her last. I sat beside all day. In the evening she collected her strength and said”Dear, I have something to tell you which i haven’t yet told anyone,you said you wanted to hear me love story,it is there in my bag above the shelf”.

As she said i went to the shelf  and searched in the bag. There was an envelope with a name on it ‘Aakash’. I hurried to grandma to confirm if it was the one she was telling about . She smiled and said ,”Yes”. She told me to open the envelope and read it aloud to her.

I opened it. The condition of the paper showed that the letter was written a long time back. I started to read.

“DEAR  Aakash,

It has been a long time since we became friends and wanted to tell you that our friendship has grown into something important for me now. I am in love with u Aakash . Its not that i recently fell in love with you but ever since we met i had always been in love with you but could never gather the courage to tell you.The memories are still fresh in my mind of the day when we first talked. I had asked you to give me your physics notes. I was more interested in feeling your presence in your writing and in the pages,than reading the notes. In the coaching classes i always waited to see you pass by me , it didn’t matter to me that i remained unnoticed. Everytime i saw you i fell in love with you all over again.

I still remember melting into that shear chocolaty feeling  just at the sight of you.When for the first time you had called out my name and talked to me, the moment was unbelievable for me. I used to get goosebumps when at  dusk you would come to talk to me in the desolate place where i used to park my cycle . I wanted you to be there for some more time but didn’t had the courage to tell you so. As time passed i wanted to spend time with you,to talk with you,to share my feeling,to know more about you and what you thought about me.You had an elan of your own. I was in love with you,your simplicity,your smile,your gait,your humbleness,the way you sometimes looked at me with your silent eyes.I prayed everyday to get a sight of you. I was too happy to watch you walking down the way to our coaching and would love to look at you for some more time.I know your friends used to tease you,sometimes i was afraid that may be it could stop you from talking to me but it never did and i am so thankful to you for that. It was very painful for me when the school ended and i lost contact with you.   Time passed by and you became a blur memory for me. But then again i got in contact with you through the facebook and i am always thankful to Zuckenburg for that.

Our friendship grew deeper and we exchanged our phone numbers. It was a moment full of excitement for me because not just i had a crush on you i had realized that deep inside i knew i was in love with you. I waited all day long for just one message from you and when i got one i used to read it over and over again and would never get bored of reading it. That time i developed a fantasy for romantic films and songs . I am thankful that you gave me feelings which i never thought i would ever experience.

I had always wanted to tell you, “Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control.” Just the thought of being with you was enough to bring a smile on my face. But sometimes i desperately needed to be with you. I wanted you close to me. I wanted to hold you hands ,to walk with you, to rest in your arms, to behold you and to watch you smile.

“I feel you entered in my life like an angel, when you spend time with me I feel I have no sorrows in my life, time is spent as fast as blow of wind.” The talks we used to have in the middle of the night was the thing that kept me sleepless the whole night. I never wanted to put the phone down,i wished may be the time i spent with you could have been eternal. May be someday i could just keep on talking to you and our talks would never end.

I waited for the moment when i you would tell me that i was the one for you,but it never came. I had spent hours crying at night whenever you told that you were still waiting for that someone special to arrive in your life,to fall in love. You don’t know how badly i prayed to God that you fall in love with me. The more boys i met in my life i more i realized that you were the only one with whom i wanted to spend my life with. I felt sick thinking of spending my life without you. YOU ARE THE BEST THING I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED.Falling in love with you was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.

But sometimes people  enter you life just to teach you that their presence was ephemeral but the memories the leave behind are eternal and blissful. We think they made a bivouac in our mind and then  we realized that they are going to stay there for ever.Hundreds of time had i lived  my life with you in my world of imagination. I imagined you falling in love with me,proposing me,our wedding,our children,we growing old together and i dying before you in your arms. But it hurts when you have someone in your heart but you can’t have that person in you arms.

All these years i have kept my feelings to myself,but now i yearn to tell them to you. I want to be with you. I want to cry with you when you are sad, to dance with you in you happiness, to care for you, to be a part of you family, to savor the things you enjoy in your life. I want to be the speccial one in you life. I want to be you soul mate,your better half,the one who holds a special place in you life,someone you would like to come to after a long,tiring day,someone to whom you would look up to tell your problems.to share your secrets.
I never felt love until I loved you. I never felt hurt until I was hurt by you. I never had a dream until that dream was you. I would never ever love someone like i loved you.You are the only one who’s me everything.

I want to spend my life with you Aakash. All i can say is “I love you” though these three words are not enough to tell my feelings for you.

waiting eagerly for your reply

Puja

dated:11 th august,1953

And thus the letter came to an end

I looked at my grandma,she was smiling like a child.I too smiled and said”Oh my god you are blushing grandma”.

And we both burst into peels of laughter. That evening she told me how she wanted to give that letter to him but the could never meet. She completely lost contacts with him . It was the most painful period of her life but she had to accept the truth. soon she was married to grandpa and in the face of so much responsibilities given to her she started to loose memories of her first love and let them go. She said,”I wanted to forget him but i guess i forgot to do so”.

We were chatting garrulously when suddenly someone knocked at the door. I opened the door,it was the doctor. after the routine check up,he said”Your grandma is trying to keep well and she would recover soon.” I replied,”love heals all wounds and in mu grandma’s case its even curing her fever.”

The doctor left quite perplexed by hat he had heard,but i knew grandma still held the memories of her first love quite afresh and it still gave her joy to remember him.I was totally spellbound while reading her story and wished things would have been different then.

Days passed by and she revealed more to me of her teenage days.the things he said to her,the special moments,all memories were still fresh in her mind.

One day my grandmother felt uneasy and began to gasp for air,I was afraid that time and didn’t knew what to do. I called upon the doctor but he didn’t receive. I ran outside the house to ask for help from my neighbors. Suddenly an old man emerged from behind the fence near my house and asked me what had happened,i narrated hem. At once he called upon another doctor while advising me to be with my grandma. I ran to my house to be with her. She was growing restless and was having problem in breathing.Soon the old man arrived with a doctor . He gave her an injection and she felt fast asleep. I turned around to thank the old man for his help and was perplexed to see him in tears. i said”You don’t need to worry sir,she will soon be fine and thanks for your help”.

Then he asked”Is you grandmother’s name Puja?”

I replied surprisingly,”Yes! But how did you know?”

To my amazement he replied,”She is my first love.I recognized her at the very first sight. I couldn’t tell me feelings to her. I was always afraid of  losing  her friendship.”

He told me the whole story of how they had met and the day they had talked for the first time. I smiled on hearing his tale. He was surprised and asked me why was i smiling.

I said,”I already know your story. The difference is that previously i knew only my grandma’s side but now i know your’s too”.

He couldn’t beleive my words,and it was then that i showed him the love letter she had written to him long ago which remained undelivered. He smiled with tears rolling down his cheeks and said to me to wait for a minute.

He went and when he returned he had a bunch of letters.He showed me all. The first letter was written one month after he had met grandma,he too was in love with her but couldn’t gather the courage to even give her the letter he had written. Few minutes later grandma became conscious. She asked for me.

I went to her and said”We have a new neighbor here. He helped me to call a doctor for you and he wants to meet u”.

My grandmother nodded . I called him. One look at him and my grandma soon realized who he was and burst into tears.Then she recollected herself to confirm if it was he and if he could remember her.

He said,”I will let my letters speak for me this time”, and handed her the letters.

She read them all and was happy like a child. He told him how he too had feelings but  could never tell her.

I was happy that my grandma had finally found her love. she said”I am so thankful to God for giving me this moment of love. Atleast i would have my last wish fulfilled”.

That evening  my grandma rested in his arms and said”I love you aakash” and he replied “I love you too”.

She smiled and glanced at him,”I found you happy in my dreams and always wished that if  that way i would see you happy i always wished i would close my eyes for ever”,Saying this she closed her eyes and he embraced her. But after the she lay there still and we soon realized she had left us for her heavenly abode.

But i was happy that atleast my grandma had her wish fulfilled..”She died in the arms of her love..the thing she always wished too!”

Aakash too was silent and i knew it was a tough time for him. He too had a family of his own living abroad and his wife had died 10 yrs back.the same year my grandpa did. Both had the same story. The really had a love story.

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