PART X
3 YEARS LATER:
I’m working as an Engineer in a Multinational Company. Though life is busy but I still manage to take time to visit her Facebook Profile and check her new display pictures, and every time I check her profile, my heart literally cries “Come Back”. In my life, I have realized that all relationships come to an end but at the same time have first time known the feeling of ‘Love’… true love. I still believe I was not wrong… she’d just seen the wrong second of a two-second story… the skipping of the other second separated blood from my arteries.
Damn that second, screwed everything including my life. I still remember her after all these years and I still love her after all those times and tears. Now she probably won’t be remembering me, she departed ‘herself’ from ‘me’ but I will remember her throughout the journey of my life… and love her till the end of my life, as I had promised her. And this promise seems good, so I don’t feel like breaking it ever.
She might be thinking, if she thinks about it at all, that I was only playing a one big game with her and I betrayed her. This story of ours had a wonderful beginning but the worst is – this story has already come to an end.
Study says that it takes the typical person 17 months and 26 days to get over an ex, but more than that has passed and still I’m not able to get over her, no, actually the fact is, I don’t even wanna try. The exact time an average brain takes when retrieving a memory is 0.0004 seconds. I wonder being so many kilometers away and so much time – 3 years – away from me now, she always remains with me, I mean the ‘mem’ries’ that I have with her… with the one I loved most.
I recall what she’d told me once… towards the end of our relationship she’d told me once,“Shayaan, I wish I could find you just like I found you then. The person I thought you were when I found you then is entirely different from the one you’re now, but there shall always remain a part of you inside me… though I know you’ve parted everything associated to me from inside you. I shall meet you someday around… around some corner of this world… someday… and I wanna see tears in your eyes like you’re seeing right here in my eyes… And you shall beg for me for the Love… But remember, I shan’t return… I’ve walked many a miles with you but now I’ve decided to walk my miles without you… So, Good Bye…”
After 3 years from ‘then’, that is ‘today’ – 31 August 2012 – we met at “I.G Airport” in New Delhi. I had never thought to see her again in my life. I thought that she was just a dream in my life and she existed no more in my real life though in my heart and mind, she always ruled. But “Life is full of surprises”… and I realized this when, coincidently, while I was collecting my Boarding Pass, a passenger behind me called my name – “Shayaaaaaan”.
This voice was so familiar… I had heard this voice before and it had a special place in my mind and ears. I would recognize it even after I were dead. This scene and voice resembled so much to the time when she’d met me second time at ‘Mint Leaf” and this voice had no different effect. Her voice still entrained me like it did on 18 Jan 2009, three years back from now.
I turned back knowing very much that it was “she” – “Aaliya” calling my name. I looked at her for about 7 seconds without speaking a word at first. She always had this knack to pause my senses whenever I looked at her… The neurons of my brain stopped transmitting when I got the first glance of her. She looked the same – beautiful… most gorgeous girl on this planet for whom I was still, even today ready to die. She was worth fighting for, worth dying for.
She looked at me and smiled gently and I reciprocated as I always used to during our relationship 3 years back.
“Shayaan, is that you?” she asked.
“I’m…” I smiled again, but my heart had a different answer “No, I’m a broken and shattered version of Shayaan who once was yours...” but since heart is a dumb machine… so no one notices what it says, often. It keeps all the pain inside… which heap up with each passing day, explosions occur inside it every day but unlike atomic bombs it’s explosions produce sound similar to a feather when falling on the ground – though it’s explosiveness are much more dangerous and they completely destroy even the strongest mechanical human that surrounds this weak, delicate emotion house.
In this short conversation that we had, she told me how a year after our break-up she had met my ex where she confirmed every truth, and how she was being sorry for not believing me. I could see the guilt first time in her otherwise beautiful eyes. I could see tears that I never ever wanted to give to her almond eyes. Since she was the only true ‘Love’ of my life I’d always been dreaming of, so I couldn’t resist asking about getting back into a relation. I stumbled while asking, but I didn’t want to miss a chance.
Well, before she could answer my question of getting back together, someone coming from another terminal of Airport, approaching towards us, called her name, ‘Aaliya…’ and continued, “I’d been waiting from last 15 minutes there and you’re busy talking here… Am I your security guard here waiting for you like a fool?’ he asked her… so rudely… and before I could get to him and break his face infront of everyone.
Aaliya just looked at me and smiled, a very uneasy smile that was, but that smile itself answered my question. Well, to come directly to the point – that guy was her ‘husband’. Yes, she’d got married to him… married just 7 days back.
That day I could actually realize how much pain a broken heart can give. I didn’t hear from her since, but every night before I go to my bed, I lock the door of my room as a routine, take out an old framed photograph of ‘Me and Her together’, wipe the glass with my hands, hang it to a drilled nail on the wall just opposite to my bed, and sleep watching her every night, rolling tear drops on my pillow, and waking up in the morning with first glance at her coupled with a smile… looking at her… just her… and just to say “I Love You” to the one I loved.
Unspoken grief, unrealized dream, broken promises, unfulfilled wishes. My heart aches to think about it, why does it hurt so much? The feeling of losing you is still there when you’ve gone for so long. You make me nervous, you make me uncomfortable, you still have a part of me that I’ve lost, the pain of losing you… I suffer a lot… Because I too… had a love story!
And so here I am… lost… lost in the light of the moon of this night… that comes through my window… bathed in blue… speaking to my shadow… and making me cry… the tears of blood… of pain and sorrow… as if there is no tomorrow…
It was the same night a few years ago, when I let you go… I didn’t want to, but I had to let you go… Now I’m living in your afterglow… but here I am… lost… lost in the ashes of time, but who wants tomorrow?
In between the longing to hold you again… I’m caught in your shadow, I’m losing control… my mind drifts away, but I only have today… as if there is no tommorow…
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Copyright © Uzair Mir
