Love Short Story – Full circle, perpetuity, adaptation and what not!
Photo credit: clarita from morguefile.com
Suddenly he woke up due to a loud knock at the door. He struggled to open his eyes and tried to lift himself, but sudden jerk in his head stopped him. He was lost for a while and had no clue what was going on. Another loud knock finally managed a bit to make him come to his senses. He intentionally refrained from opening the door.
Indifferent of his delirious state, Hemant sat up on the bed, lifted the half smoked marijuana and started taking deep puffs. He could feel his throat burning but didn’t bother to drink water from the blue water bottle lying beside him. He could feel severe headache. Uselessly tried to figure out whether this headache is due to unlimited pegs of Old Monk and Blenders pride which he had in the previous night or due to continuous smoking up since yesterday. Till today he had been thinking he was completely over Zara, that addictive beautiful lass whom he met in his ex-working life. “I think I should seriously reanalyze my characteristics!” he exclaimed suddenly.
It had all started as a joke. She was the only girl associate deputed to Leeds, England along with him and 10 others from their project while he was working. It was 1 AM in the morning. After surpassing the headache of security check and immigration they were waiting for the announcement of boarding in Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport Mumbai.
So Zara, “what about your accommodation, Is it arranged?”
“Kind of. Half of my allowance I will have to spend only for accommodation. Alex could arrange one single bedroom serviced Apartment for me for 700 pounds, which I believe is the minimum. I am so clueless what to do about it”.
“Damn! This is so bad. And I am sharing 2 BHK with 5 people. 1100 pounds. But I really don’t want to share with so many people.”
He added mischievously with a mischievous dimpled smile, “Take me as your live-in partner, we can share 700 pounds”.
“Are you serious Hemant? I really don’t mind. Don’t worry, I won’t rape you.”
He was almost numb with excitement, little confused whether this was a counter joke in reply to his supposed to be lame joke or did she really mean it. The kind of characteristics of Zara he is familiar with, earlier seemed more appropriate.
They ended up having 2 years of blissful live-in relationship in Leeds. This was not the first time a girl came into his life. He actually had a 10 long years of fairy tale type of love story whose fate was not so luminous. Hemant took almost a year to get over the tragedy. After the incident, there were many passing by relationships on his way. He was almost convinced that love happens only once till Zara entered his life. Along with angelic face, her caring and loving nature made him go crazy. Both of them were pretty aware that they had no future in their relationship.
But unluckily there is not many human creation on Earth who has hundred percent control on their emotions. Zara belonged to an orthodox Pathan family, which behaved like a Hitler when she said she is traveling to different Country. Convincing to marry a boy from other community will be like a Jew Standing in front of Hitler and giving him one nice slap. Her family was already busy searching for a suitable match for her back in India. On the other hand Hemant was also a typical Mamma’s Boy and unfortunately, had a super orthodox maheshwari Mom. Unlike any typical Bollywood movie they had a very unhappy ending.
But some intelligent person had quoted, “Time flies and it also heals everything!” After coming back to India Hemant decided to appear for CAT. In spite of him having very vague idea of any kind of motivation to write CAT he successfully aced one of the most important questions during almost all interviews, “Why MBA?” and could surpass the strong gate of IIM, Lucknow. Even if he didn’t have much clue about the so called MBA degree, one thing he was sure that he desperately wanted that “change” in his life. Another important thing was, he temporarily felt like he was a twin brother of Rajnikant when he pressed the send button of his resignation mail addressed to his manager and later enjoy his face which resembled the crying face of a typical Indian Bahu of some boring Saas-Bahu soap opera.
Inertia of job life made him work hard in the initial few days of his first term. But that hardly lasted for a week and he was back to square one. College environment made him scrap his so called mature and hardworking nature which were supposedly side effects of typical IT job. Fortunately Zara also became a sweet little negligible memory for him. Like his golden life during his Engineering, quizzes and assignments became secondary and Weeds and Old Monk became primary.
Accidently, he befriended a girl from his class in his first term and got quiet close to her. For a second, he had a random silly feeling that he feels for her. But very soon he realized she was worse than a headache for him due to complete unmatched wavelength between them. Slowly and steadily he started avoiding her and it was once again a party time for him.
All was going pretty well till yesterday. It was around 5 PM in the evening. He entered his room whistling “coming back to life” busy thinking about the Saturday evening in the background. They had planned to go for the newly released movie in the evening and then party in the night. He felt as if sudden gush of wind passed by him and made him feel chilly even in the scorching summer of July. It was this scanned copy of a beautiful red color marriage invitation card from Zara attached with an emotional filmy type long email.
He felt something very uncomfortable inside. Maybe some shed of tears might have helped him but typical male characteristics made him light a cigarette instead of shedding those useless drops of tears. He didn’t realize how many he smoked continuously till a phone call from Niharika made him get back into his senses. He remember he could simply utter one simple line of lie to her, “I am suddenly not feeling well Niharika. You guys carry on for the movie. I will join you guys tonight for the party”. He rolled about 5 in one go and started smoking up.
“Yes! Coming”. Loud horrifying continuous knock at the door made him also to scream rather scarily. He knew it can be only Niharika. In this two months he has become quiet acquainted with her crazy behavior. He had met her in the beginning of his second term. He realized, they were unbelievably of same nature in rather different way and share some same tastes. Her continuous chirp makes his day, her tantrums make him laugh crazily and her craziness make him go crazy. He gathered all his courage, held his head with his palms and finally woke up to open the door.
“How much will you sleep sweetheart? It is already 5 PM. I have been calling you since 3. U have slept whole day. Now enough”.
Before she could figure out he hugged her tight and starting kissing her passionately. “I don’t care even if you are married Niharika. I think I am in love with you. Hug me for five minutes please”.
__END__
