~K. Anish Pokharel~
Abhaya finally got rid of his uneasy dream. It was already nine in the morning. This seemed unusual; but that day he had reasons for oversleeping. However, he was not sure what may have caused it, but his countenance spoke of his not-so-good night’s rest.
The bright sunrays through the partially opened window penetrated mercilessly into his domain, and owed little to the state of his mind. It was a gratifying morning — sunrays enveloped the wide prairie, dewdrops dangled on the grass, and leaves rustled so as to simulate some melancholic whisper. This pleasantness was just enough for many to forget all their sorrows. Abhaya, however, was almost indifferent. Until yesterday, the big house with the huge courtyard in the front, where hundreds of tulips merrily blossomed, gave him a sense of contentment. But that day, a strange feeling of abomination was clouding his senses. The whole acquisition that he held within his existence suddenly reduced to a size his vision could not comprehend.
Even though he could not stand the continuous ringing of the phone which was deliberately distorting the morning silence, he walked slowly toward the telephone. “Abhaya, you are late,” the familiar voice on the other side exclaimed.
He knew he was late. Had it been just another normal day, by that time of the morning he would have already been flooded with patients in his surgical ward. He listlessly replied, “Samrat, looks like the headache is going to burst my head. Friend, I think I need a day off.”
It is needless to say that he was lying, but his peer had no good reason to suspect the predicament that he was in. Samrat understood.
Samrat and Abhaya had been good friends since they had started medical school together. Perhaps it was the similar background or their identical mindset, because of which they always cherished one another’s company. During his stay at the medical school, Abhaya was obsessed with becoming a psychiatrist, and the thought of bringing improvement in the lives of the mentally inferior people was a real challenge. But then, things did not materialize the way he wanted them to. He became a surgeon. He had no regrets, however.
The feeling of emptiness was crawling all over him that day. The silence of the room and the incessant trickling of the dewdrop from the windowpane aggravated his loneliness. Thinking of ways to get out of this predicament he turned the music on.
“How many roads must a man walk down, before he is called a Man…” Bob Dylan’s lugubrious voice started to fill his abysmal void. Meanwhile, his body rested on a chair and his lips moved feebly uttering the lyrics of the song, word by word. While he relaxed and sang to himself, a sudden gust of wind rushed into the room and pushed the photo-frame resting on his bedside onto the floor. Nay! He was not oblivious to the fall, but the sound of the breaking glass and the music mingled so perfectly that he thought the incident did not need any attention. After a while, Abhaya’s lethargic legs moved ceaselessly towards the broken pieces of glass. Her face was immaculate as ever and her eyes had a radiance that no one could stand. She was still smiling even though the jagged pieces of glass were all set to make it obscure. He did not move. He stared at her eyes for some time then he thought to himself, ‘Is this all true?’
Sneha was a vivacious girl. She had a charm that no one could resist. She was undoubtedly beautiful; but what made her different from the rest was her eloquence — she could talk about anything, and could make anyone believe that she was the most truthful. It was this eloquence that had mesmerized Abhaya.
It was about two years back when Abhaya had met her for the first time in a medical convention. She was a journalist. A few exchange of words that day laid the way for innumerable meetings that gave them a chance to know one another in a very short period of time. She had her own ways of expressing her interest in him, and he too made his inclinations apparent numerous times. Their togetherness was hinting nothing but an inception of a new episode.
Abhaya had a strange trait, however. He was an introvert. He did not shed a drop of tear when his parents died in an ominous car accident nor did he rejoice when he became a surgeon. Even though he was very considerate and empathetic, nobody could discern this unless one knew him very well. Sneha, on the contrary, was an extrovert. She had been explicit enough to express her love on several occasions. Abhaya, even though he loved her whole-heartedly, never really expressed his feelings. All he plagiarized quite often was:
“Don’t follow me, I may not lead you. Don’t walk ahead, I may not follow you. Just walk beside me, I’ll be there forever!”
His aesthetic sense and her sense of appreciation blended almost intricately, and remarks such as these were more than enough to soothe her heart. Time went by and with it increased her longing to hear the words of love and commitment, which he never thought worth discussing. He always said, “Sneha, I cannot commit since I have so many other priorities.”
She used to get hurt knowing that she was not his priority; but even then her love for him never reduced.
Someone had once said to Abhaya, “A girl needs to know when she is being loved and when she is not!” This thought was not alien to him, but what he instead felt was, “One does not have to express one’s love by saying it in words.”
Since he never really resorted to words, sometimes he wondered, “Why do people hold so much stigma about love? Is just saying ‘I love you’ everything?” He was sure there were innumerable ways to express one’s love. Unfortunately, he never really uttered these three words that Sneha yearned to hear so much.
Although the contents of the world are sometime static, we all have different windows to look at the same thing. Although his heart was filled with love, his own belief that love was something to be felt rather than to be manifested in words did not coincide with hers. She had a different view. She needed an explicit verbal conveyance of his love toward her.
Their professional obligations had always kept them busy and left them with very little time to spend together.
But Abhaya always felt that the physical distance could be of no consequence so far as he was convinced of her love.
What he never tried to do was to see the world from Sneha’s eyes; and he guided himself with the belief that every action of his was as impeccable as could be thought of.
Alas! Only if he would have known that his beliefs could cost him his love…
One cannot expect the world to rotate around one’s own vision. But, he was never to realize this.
Meanwhile, Sneha was getting weary of his attitude, and was slowly drifting away from him. Abhaya was unaware of Sneha’s desire to be told, “I love you.”
Then one night his phone rang. It was Sneha. But it was not an every day call he used to get. In fact he was not ready for what was about to unfold.
“Abhaya,” she said, “I am getting married!”
The news shook the floor beneath his legs…
A long pause, and a feeling of ambivalence crawled over the ambience…
She continued, “Although I loved you with my life, you never really conceded your love for me. I wonder if you even cared!”
His quivering lips moved so as to utter, “Why?”
“You did not even say ‘I love you’ for once!”
He felt as if he had not slept for thousand years, and was tired of traveling endless miles of his belief. He imagined himself in the shackles for an unjustifiable crime that he had committed. He felt like a conqueror who had won the battle at the cost of things for which the battle was fought for… Moments later, the receiver of the telephone was hanging downwards from the table.
He realized his loss.
No he did not weep as was inherent to him. “Only if life had been so much blissful, I would have just sat and cried!” he said to himself.
(Source : Sulekha.com )
