Memory Remains

She told me that I don’t love her. I am indifferent to anything that happens to her. That I am selfish. That our intimacy, which she with all her power could not shake off, I treat as my victory over her. My stray and light-hearted comments were my inner thoughts lay thus exposed, and that they vouch for my selfishness. The onslaught continued for a while. Then she put down the phone and quite perfunctorily, as it appeared to me then, she bade me good night, disconnected the phone and….... never called again. Six months later came the news that she got married.

I was sipping tea at the cafeteria with a group of colleagues when one of them broke the news that the girl I was flirting with got married. I cried out within myself: "I did not flirt with her but loved her dearly." My stomach started churning. I felt a clutch at my throat and before the moist eyes could betray my feelings, I pretended attending a phone call and moved out of the crowd. Quite unconsciously, I approached a pan shop and lit a cigarette. At the first puff, I started coughing. It was almost two years that I had quit smoking. In that fit of cough, I found an excuse to let my tears stream from my eyes. Now it made no difference - I was attracting attention of people around.

I could not analyse the sorrow till date, not to speak of the moment when it dawned upon me that my sweetheart was gone forever. A great distance fell between us. Something died within me that day. The scars of the unexpected terror raid that massacred my tenderest feelings are still fresh in my heart. The gush of that moment of separation still knocks on my head and I bury my head into my hands for the fear where it would break into pieces.

That moment was steeped in sorrow. With a heavy heart I came home. My senses had quit me. I left the keys at the office. I broke the lock. Got into my room and locked myself. It was not just my eyes, every pore of my body cried for her. I pulled at my hair, squeezed my hands with clenched teeth, blood oozed all over and I sucked my own blood like a lunatic. I was shattered. For a moment the weeping would stop; I thought solace was around, and I would be shown out of this grief. But again, tears would well up and I would be drowned in the grief which no consolation could pierce.

I got up from the chair in which I lay sunk till midnight and moved out of my house and walked into the night. I did not know where my feet fell. When I came back home, the Sun had dispelled the darkness on the way but the darkness of my heart is still as deep as ever though hundred suns have risen and set in the horizon since that day.

People tell me time heals all wounds. I wonder what wounds they refer to. Things don’t register themselves into my mind any deeper as I am always preoccupied with her thoughts. My energies have flown into gathering her memories day in and day out. I hold conversations with her, complaining her of the miserable state she had brought me to and that I deserved something better. But I dare not touch her for the fear when this luxury of her presence would cheat me even in my fancies. Nor do I ask myself whether she still loves me. The question isn’t significant anymore. My life is inextricably woven into her.

Each day I wake up to her dreamy presence and fill myself with her thoughts. She is the flavour of my being. She is here and everywhere. Her remembrance is sustenance; her absence is death. And, my breath shall last as long as her memory remains.
(664 words)