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The Mirage - contd

by Krishna Chaitanya
(Srikakulam, India)

Despite the unbefitting state of affairs, couldn't I convey my heart not to fall in a love. Indeed, it must've known better than the five senses which had been transmitting signals for eighteen years, nearly all of them been excruciating. Not it listened to those senses which foreshadowed a disaster obscured behind the first sensation of love. It had fallen in love. So had I.

There were at least a fifty applications arrived at our table, proposing love to Kavya, throughout the engineering, where she, and I had been sharing a bench in the Computer Science block, from different branches and assorted batches in the college, from those guys who were very much charming than me, and very much taller and stronger than me. But all of them had been rejected smoothly. Most of them suited her well, when they stood beside her. They seemed apposite for her, by their persona, tongue, deeds and pecuniary rank in the society. She too was acquainted with that. But not I comprehended what she was expecting, and what kind of a person she had dreamt for. I couldn't alter her dreams. However, I knew I's least suited to her, and ineligible to stand beside her exchanging wedding rings and posing at the cameraman. If it had happened, the cameraman would've laughed and thought, what an inappropriate couple. And in no time the word would spread around the wedding hall, then around the village. For which Kavya would suffer a discomfiture, whilst I would feel inferior. Friendship was fine, nobody would ask for a suitability test. But for love and all the later on stuff--everyone needed to be answered--their eyes to be satisfied--their expectations to be reached, both physically and psychologically. If not, wrong words would spread around. They would pierce her. The love would be broken. Indeed the friendship too. And we should be fine actors for rest of the life, smiling ostensibly but anguishing indoors silently. Either of our lives would be ruined out. So I thought, instead, better to love her noiselessly everlastingly, and not to divulge it at any cost. All that I did for a decade and might be for few more to be coming. But also I think she too loved me as silently and secretly as I did, whilst she too might've a fine reason--for never to reveal it--and forever to articulate it.

Since the last day of graduation, I had been sleeping sideways, as one would slumber when

down in the dumps, laying on the floor, folding the hands close to the chest and legs creased to the thighs. Awaken amid the mid-nights, sobbing through the mornings, I had drowned in the hands caved in over the knees. Night and day, hunger haunted, but not a chow enticed my stomach's appetite. Day for day, thirst mounted, but not a runny contented my tongue's dryness. Neither a shave nor a hair-cut I had. I bunged obtainable to the workplace devoid of a preceding notice. I switched off my phone. Now all I was solitary. All I was secluded.

And all these days of darkness, for fourteen months, I had worn-out in Chennai, the place where not the lingo comprehended by me; not a human being related to me. Now, more I was a yogi, for the beard touched the chest, and hair had fallen over the shoulders. Dark spots encircled beneath the drowned eyes. Except the times of starvation, the room's doors were fastened with myself sunk in a ragged couch, ahead of which placed a little reading-table, on which spread a low-quality rough book, over which dancing a ball pen, I had been garlanding my tragic love stories.

All of a sudden, I remembered the old woman who had been living adjacent to our house in my village of Srikakulam, and I craved to see her and talk to her enormously. What a fate? It laughed at me aloud. The day I arrived at my village after all these years of seclusion, I found my adorable old woman deceased. I was upset and spent the whole evening near the rim of the river staring at the nature, and unconsciously fallen asleep over there. But Kavya was standing beside me on the very next morning. The fate again laughing at me. My life--more it appeared a fictional tale.

A blow of horn brought me back from the quick recall--again I was in the station with my most endearing lady parked herself by a window, still drooping her head and peeping down at her lap. Indeed into the magazine.

The train's engine had started. Still she didn't raise her head. The train started moving. Still she didn't raise her head. The train was crossing me. She rouse her head and turned to me. Tears had been pouring down her eyes. But I knew I was late. My love was visible to my eyes, but never could I reach it. Because a mirage it was to me.

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