“I will never be able to love
anyone ever again in my life”, she wailed incessantly. The silence of her broken
heart drowned the squealing thunder of the clouds that cried unhindered through
her eyes on that rainy night. Those beautiful wide eyes that always beamed with
the innocence of her soul haunted me with the excruciating pain that shot in
them. Being a father I had to struggle to fight the urge to bash up the guy who
had caused my princess so much grief. But that wouldn’t have alleviated her
pain.
Sometimes, some ends are best
left loose for time to tie them to new beginnings.
Sobbing uncontrollably, she went
into her room. I knew it was best to leave her alone to recuperate. The
eeriness of the night after the storm punctuated by her heart wrenching sobs
permeated through the closed door. It was unsettling and it only pronounced my
helplessness. It had been an hour since she had locked herself in the room and
I was pacing outside her door to ensure she was fine, when she stormed out of
the door. With bloodshot red eyes tired of crying, she handed me a box “Dad,
could you do me a favor? Please throw this away, give it to someone or
anything..just don’t let it be around me” she said and went back to her new
found cocoon.
It was a small red colored box,
on which was engraved ‘With love for my love’. It is strange how the entire
breadth of our memories gets encapsulated in such small spaces. But it’s even
stranger that an object or sensation can bring back the memories of a distant
past. That box in my hand took me back thirty years, when I stood by the
lovers’ abode, Marine Drive in Bombay, holding a similar box as I watched her silhouette
disappear in the other direction.
-
- - - - - - - -
I was 22 years old then and had just started working with
State Bank of India. I was a happy, carefree boy in the prime of youth. I was
proud to have studied a tad bit more than my friends and was earning enough to
live a decent bachelor life. Like any other guy my age, I was on track on the
society professed timeline of good job, beautiful wife, family, grey hair and
death. Coming from a Punjabi family settled in Hoshiarpur I had elevated my
family’s social status by bagging a job in the finance capital of India, Bombay.
In those days Bombay wasn’t this preposterously expensive as it is now. I lived
with 3 other people Anil, Sanjay and Vijay, in a rented accommodation in Church
Gate. At that time, there were no malls to hangout or pubs to go on a drinking
spree and Leopold was too expensive for my taste. When not strolling around in
Chowpatty, we would laze around in the house watching rented movies on VCR,
emptying bottles of beer and filling the room with smoke rings on weekends. It
was a complete bachelor’s pad, with clothes hanging from the top most to the
bottom most latch of the door or over the carton sized television, bottles
strewn around above as well as under the one sofa set placed in the center of
the living room, last night’s leftovers kept any and everywhere, except for the
room we called kitchen. My daily routine was pretty nonchalant. After a typical
9 to 5 job, I would on most days of the week go to the public library on M. G. Road.
This membership was the only expense out of my salary that I didn’t feel guilty
of and would tell my parents about. I have always been a voracious reader. Back
in Hoshiarpur, I would pay the local newspaper guy 10 extra rupees to get me
some books from Ludhiana and though he never understood why I was paying for
books which didn’t have any tantalizing images inside, he still brought them
for me.
So, after either borrowing the book or spending few hours in the library, I
would walk down to my home. Sometimes I would go for long strolls along the
Marine Drive. There is nothing more refreshing than the sound of waves gushing
through the stillness of your heart, washing away any uncertainties layered in
it.
But this non-descript life of
mine was getting bored of itself, so to deck it up, fate presented me with a
beautiful diversion. It was my birthday and my flat mates were celebrating my
special day in their inebriated state. But I stood there in the balcony gazing
at the night sky thinking how those stars have been an indication of my
transition from one phase of life to another. When I was a child I would stare
expectantly for one of them to come to me as my tooth fairy from among the
smoky cotton balls in the sky. When I grew into adolescence and saw Bollywood
heroes smiling in the memory of their beloved while staring at the stars, I
started doing the same, thinking of my 6th grade English teacher. That
day, I stood there contemplating my future.
My chain of thoughts was broken
by the purr of taxi that stopped in front of the neighboring house. Two girls
stepped out of it and walked into the house. I also went back and crashed into
my bed for an early next day. When I reached office in the morning, there was a
girl in the waiting area. She was wearing blue colored salwar kameez, sitting
cross legged with a file in her hand. The grace of her appearance was
accentuated by the elegant simplicity of her attire. I went up to her and asked
“Hello Ma’am. How may I help you?” She lifted her gaze from the file and stood
up with a startled jerk. Her eyes were a sea of beauty. When she blinked
nervously, the throbbing of her eyelashes enhanced the magnificence curtained
by them. I hadn’t heard if she responded anything in those few seconds, but she
caught me staring at her and dropped her eyes. I realized I was encroaching into
her space and took a hesitant step backward. At that very moment my manager
stepped in “Ah Shazia, so you have come. Welcome to SBI” he said beaming with
all his thirty two teeth cutting into his fleshy cheeks. Shazia gave him a
nervous smile and glanced sideways at me. “Oh Good morning Ashish! Meet Shazia
Ahmed. She is joining us as a Clerk from today. Shazia, this is Ashish. He also
works as a Clerk here and he will explain you all about your work and the
bank”. He started walking away, but stopped midway and turned back “Oh by the
way Shazia, I must tell you how proud I feel to have a woman joining us. It
feels good to know that women of the nation are finally starting to realize
their potential”. He gave a reassuring smile like a proud father. My boss was a
good man. He himself had two daughters and even in that decade, when women were
eventually to become just wives, he had encouraged his daughters to pursue
higher studies. One of them was studying in a college in Bombay and the other
was studying for Civil Services. I used to feel proud of my association with
him.
“Hi Shazia. Welcome to the bank”
I broke the silence. She coyly replied “Thank you” Her voice rung mellifluously
and drowned everything around in its melody. I jerked myself to stop gazing at
her, lest she took me for a drool. I took her around the office, showed her the
customer service centers, the rickety mess and finally to her assigned seat.
Since she was new, I invited her to have lunch with the team during the lunch
hour. She was having a pulsating effect on me since the moment my eyes set on
hers. She was undoubtedly the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. The
captivating glaze of her face could give even my favorite Hema Malini a run for
money. But it was not just the physical beauty that set my heart aflutter. The
radiance emanating from her personality was a blend of warm innocence and assured
self-confidence. She took the day to settle in and we met in the evening to
discuss about her work over tea. After a good half hour discussion on work, I
blurted “So Shazia, are you from Bombay?” Throughout our conversation, I was
consciously holding myself to not cross the professional territory, but the
river crossed the gate anyway. I was relieved she didn’t take it offensively
“No, I am basically from Hyderabad. My family is settled there” she told. “So
have you figured out a place to live? If you need any help do let me know. I
can ask a cousin to help you. She lives here in Bombay.” I offered to help her.
“Thank you so much. But, I am staying with my khaala, I mean my aunt. She lives
somewhere in Church gate area.” She lives in the same area as mine! I felt a
funny feeling in my stomach. “Oh great! I also live in the same area. Let me
drop you there” I know I should have, but I couldn’t control my excitement. We
took a taxi to Churchgate. It was humid outside but when her fluttering dupatta
cut across the minimal air particles in that seemingly clamped taxi, it soothed
my nerves somehow. We reached at a bus stop in ten minutes from where she
offered to walk to her place. I felt that she was getting uncomfortable sharing
the taxi with me or maybe to show her place to a man whom she had met for the
first time, so I asked the taxi driver to drop me at the library and take the
lady to her home.
At the library, the book I had in
front of me was about the massacres in Second World War, but I sat there
staring into a whole between those words with a smile plastered on my face. I
lost count of hours and realized it was well past my time when the librarian
pleadingly requested me to leave so that she could close the library. When I
reached home I saw Shazia feeding a dog outside my neighbor’s house. “Hi
Shazia. What are you doing here?” She looked up startled “Oh hello Ashish. I..I
stay here with my aunt”. I guess I was just short of yelling excitedly, but my
face sure gave away the expression. Saving a last minute grace, I forced my
lips that had almost curved into an excited beam to drop down to a plastered
nonchalance. “That’s great” it was all I could manage despite the flurry of
words racing my heart.
I have never been a morning
person, but the next morning I was totally in love with Sun rising so early. In
fact I had hardly slept. I was suffering from the ‘love at first sight’
syndrome and the symptoms were sleepless night, not getting irked by my track
pant yet again covering lousy Vijay’s bum, me getting ready an hour earlier and
reading newspaper, or let’s stay using it as a cover letting me glance sideways
at Shazia’s house from my balcony, waiting for her to come out. And then she
came out with her open hair dancing to the chirp of birds. I have always heard
that Sun rises are the most beautiful sight and till today I relate it to her
beautiful face turning expectantly towards my flat that day and then coyly
turning to the other side upon noticing me there. I raced downstairs and said
“Good morning Shazia”. She replied “Good morning Ashish”. I asked her “Ready to
go to office?” She smiled and nodded. “Do you mind if we take the same taxi,
considering we are going to the same place” “Oh yes, that makes sense of
course” she replied. During our ride, she seemed much more comfortable than the
previous day. In the 20 minute ride, we chatted about Bombay weather, roads,
traffic. The previous day, there was hesitance in her voice whenever she spoke,
but the way she looked at me that morning across my house and the ease with
which she initiated conversation while in taxi gave me a feeling that something
mutual was brewing among us.
This became our usual routine. We
would leave for office together, come back home together and would chat often during
the day over work or at times about non work issues. My visit to libraries
became later in the evening or none at all on some days. Her family had moved
from Pakistan to Hyderabad post-independence and had faced the angst of
political insurgency. She lived with her parents and two younger sisters. The
conservativeness of the era had engulfed her and like other girls her age, she
was forced to sever her friendship with books when a community elder saw her
chatting with a boy in her college, though she was only exchanging notes. But
her father was a professor and encouraged Shazia to find her footing, but even
the strong hearted have feared the wrath of society since ages. It was then
that he sent her to Bombay to stay at his sister’s place.
She often spoke about the
redundancy of customs, religions and the societal categorizations, but she
respected her family enough to know that they were bound by those shackles and
that the peripheries mattered to them. She was the epitome of a young woman entangled
in the transition between the misdirected conventional cacophony of the society
and the voice of her heart beckoning her to a world of thoughts stemming from
heart and not from scriptures.
As our proximity grew, the
realities of our societal identities began to haunt us. I was a Hindu. She was
a Muslim. We had never professed our love to each other, but we could feel it
spreading its roots throughout. The fortune of finding love would make the
whole world pause in our dreamland and the other moment would bring the aching
fear of losing it to the real world’s diktats. I knew that even if I try to
convince with all my heart, my family would never accept a Muslim girl.
One night, when I was sitting in
the balcony, I could hear some sounds coming from her place, as if there was an
argument going on. The next day she left early for office. I waited for her
outside her house, but couldn’t muster the courage to ask in, because she had
once hinted that her aunt was disapproving of her increasing closeness with me.
Throughout the day, she was in a somber mood and didn’t talk much to me. Before
she left for the evening, she came to my desk and said “Ashish, I haven’t
really seen much of Bombay. Do you mind showing me around some time?” I got up
from my desk and stared amazed at her. Our conversations till then had seen
only the route from home to office and back. “Is this Friday fine with you? We
can take an off, if it’s not an issue for you” She said when I didn’t reply.
“Sure, I will take an off” I said robotically, still not getting the groove of
her request. “Perfect. It’s decided then for Friday. We can meet outside office
and leave from here”. She said mechanically and left, without as much a smile.
There was a strange steely resolve on her face. It seemed there was a hurricane
of thoughts gushing silently through her mind and that wanting to go
sight-seeing was more of a mission than a desire. It was confusing to see her
strangely unattached.
I waited to meet her until
Friday. That day, she was wearing the same blue salwar kameez I first saw her
in. It was the sight of an angel descended from heaven. Her smile was a
different one that day. The unhindered gleam of her eyes and resplendent smile
of her lips seemed unbounded for the first time. She took me by the hand and we
boarded a taxi. We went to Gateway, had chickpeas and peanuts there. We sat
there admiring the beauty of Taj. She took me to Haji Ali and I took her to
Siddhi Vinayak. We thanked each other’s’ Gods for gracing us both with their
blessings for one beautiful day of divine love not constricted by societal
categorizations in the behest of Almighty’s different names. We laughed at a
silly Bollywood movie we watched together (which unlike reality had happy
ending), ate Bombay famous pav bhaji. We basically found serenity in the
bustling city of Bombay that day.
We went to Colaba, where she
enjoyed every girl’s favorite indulgence – shopping and I tried to savor every
moment of that phenomenal day. I wanted so much to gift her, a memento of our
beautiful day together, but I felt chained by my own helplessness. It was
ironical that I wanted to gift her, those memories that were most likely to be
cause of pain than reason for smile. But then as fate would have it, she didn’t
have change and I offered to pay for a box of earrings despite her persistent
resistance. A surge of pained relief rushed through my veins.
In the evening we sat by Marine
Drive next to each other, without uttering as much a word. It had been a
perfect day, but as the day dusked, it was time for reality to dawn on us. The
silence that transpired between us, amplified the noise in our hearts. I wanted
to plead the waves to not harp on the water beneath and let it stay there, but
didn’t have the strength to negotiate with the haughty air to stop its wrath.
She went to Hyderabad for a week, during which
I reasoned with myself what it would take to spend my life with this gift from
Heaven. The more I thought the more I saw despair. When she returned, she asked
me to meet her at Marine Drive. I didn’t know what to expect. With a realm of
uncertainties pounding in my heart I went to meet her.
She had the same detached look from
that day at office. “Ashish, I am taking a transfer to Hyderabad branch”, she
said. I stood there bewildered, still trying to comprehend her words. She must
have sensed my confusion. “Thank you for being an amazing friend. Had it not
been for you, Bombay wouldn’t have been so amazing for me”, she said all this
with her moistened eyes gazing into my confused eyes and then she lowered them
“But, I don’t have the courage to make this world accept our friendship when it
has still not been able to understand the camaraderie between Allah and Ram”. I
stood there as she lifted her gaze into my deadpan eyes. I had nothing to say,
because I knew she was right. “Call me if you are ever in Hyderabad”, she said
and looked at me with expectant eyes.
But I didn’t ask for her phone
number. In those few months she had come to occupy the special place in my
heart that made me feel serene and calm, but I knew she was right. The fate of
our emotions would have been scarred with hatred and pain, if we tried to
explain to the world. I didn’t stop her when she turned to leave. I didn’t say anything
because I had nothing to say. She paused on her way, turned back and came to
me. She handed me the box of earrings and said “If I keep this with me, I will
always reflect back on these beautiful memories with remorse and pain. I want
to have you in my heart forever as a wonderful friend Allah blessed me with for
some precious moments” she smiled and left. Her smile had no pain now. It had
the solace of acceptance. As I watched her silhouette disappear, I prayed to
God for a happy life for both of us and felt the waves of tranquil flow into
me.
Those few months had changed me.
I had met my first love and lost her. There were moments of despair when the
numbness of my heart yelled at my cowardice for letting her go, and there were
moments of tranquil when I felt that our decision was the greatest respect of
our love to avoid getting our emotions and each other sloshed in public
humiliate by the ignorant.
Time went by and I moved on in my
life, because life is a cruel master that forces you to open another book as
soon as you finish the previous one, and I am glad it did. I got married to a
girl of my parents’ choice.
Shazia was my first love, but
losing someone you love makes you more appreciative of love when it comes into
your life the next time. Recuperating from your lost love makes you realize
that love is not just butterflies, it is also the bee stung; it is not just the
roses, but also the thorns; it is not just the kiss of love, but also the wrath
of heartbreak. But love is an emotion, which when touches you, cleanses your
soul and brings you closer to yourself through the joys and pains it brings. When
this understanding of its divinity dawns it makes you mature enough to
appreciate it when God blesses you with it for the next time in your life.
This is what happened with me. I
had lost my first love, but the love of my life found me later in the form of
my wife, who is now my best friend, my soul mate and the answer to why I
couldn’t muster the courage to stop Shazia. My wife is the reason I feel alive
and thankful to God for the bigger picture he had hidden from me then. During
our 20 years of togetherness, I have come to love her and respect her
immensely. I have come to trust that the Sun will shine for you only when its
warmth is good for you. Now whenever I do, I recall Shazia as that awesome
friend Allah bestowed on me to realize the fairness of His decisions when the
man made by Him tries to assume His authority and becomes unfair.
-
- - - - - - - - - - -
Lost in the whirlwind of the
past, I didn’t realize I had slept over on the arm chair, only to be awoken by
my mobile ringing “Hey honey, Good morning! How is Isha? I will try to be there
as soon as possible”. It was my wife getting worried about our daughter. “Don’t
worry honey. She will be fine soon. Have a safe trip back home”.
I knocked on Isha’s door. She opened
the door. Sunken eyes, tired face, she surely seemed a mess. “Dad, will I ever
forget him?” “No, you won’t. He will always be in your thoughts, locked in some
distant corner, but always there” She seemed confused. “It’s up to you how you
want to remember him. Do you want to insult your memories by hating him or do
you want to respect them by forgiving him and moving on” She seemed to sober
down. “But, Dad I feel so hurt. I might never be able to love anyone else”.
“Trust in time and love will find
you again!” I hugged her, knowing in my heart that she would be able to
appreciate it with time.
