Not Ready

To bee, or not to bee

The peninsular city of Hyderabad is eternally a summer struck city. Some days are hotter than other. But the last winter was quite chilling. It started shedding leaves in the autumn. But one can always hope for an evergreen tree to keep its leaves. It was different that year. Probably it was time. Time for the green, fulfilling leaves to go. 

It was a story of almost three years. They met online; he was looking for a woman to marry, and she was looking for a man to find passion with. I could not believe it was her; she really had changed as were the rumours. She was a different woman. She was calm, dangerously calm. She talked for long, as usual. As if a dark wave had hit her soul, thundering and storming her inner thoughts. She smiled when I offered her coffee. Probably because that reminded her of him. I was not sure how exactly to respond. Her eyes were brimming, and yet dry. Like the face of a woman who has seen through her life, and is living beyond her time. I  was looking at her from an angel. I did not, could not, look at her directly. It unsettled me. 

The darkness has loomed over her entirely.

"It is easy to break up. The arrogant, hurt mind will keep you away from dialing his number. How does one refrain from seeking happiness? He is my happiness. His cruel, insensitive talks are my happiness. His lust for my insecure body is my happiness. His harsh tantrums are my happiness. How to keep the heart from what is rightfully its? That it when it pinches. That is when you accept be it a disagreement, but the familiar, soothing voice is there. From a crisis, it turns into cold fire. That is when your running wound is confirmation of life. And you trade pain with painful him."

Does he not know you are hurt, I asked her in a tone inaudible to me. She looked at me; starred at my lowered eyes for a while. She smiled with a difficulty known to probably every heart in love, half accepted, half tampered.

"He knows. He knows it all. He knows it better than me. But I am not to control how he feels about doing for us. He can think. He does think. May be, he is stuck somewhere and I am not of help to him. You see, I don't know him very well. It is like a religion to me. Blind faith. He protects. He preserves. I accept his mercy. I love him for his unconditional terms. I am sue he is in pain too. It is difficult for a man to deal with his own pain. He finds it easy to solve anything for me. It is he himself a knot to him, and thus to us. I am not empowered, neither entitled, to solve anything for him. He wouldn't trust with me,"

"It is a Schrodinger's cat situation. His abstinence, his presence, is known to him and him only. I wonder if he knows it even! He s intimidatingly attractive. The more I am drawn to him, the more I harness a fate of a moth drawn to light."

She didn't sigh the whole time; as if, that wold mean she is ready for him to give up. She went on narrating few episodes. laughed at their silly fights, cried at their audacity to stay away without speaking for weeks. Why him? Why she has to have him? They had their fair share. The more I wondered, the more she stuttered, I realized there must be more to what seems. I did not tell her so. I did not have answers to her tearful eyes at command of her smiling lips. Somehow, chaos made sense for the first time. Somehow, 'happily ever after' sounded almost at the reach of hands, but without a footstool.

People are like trains in a railway station. You remain there, watching many trains come and go. You would expect a halted train to remain there. But that's not the purpose. People leave. He, too, will leave. She knows it. She is scared that accepting it would make it impossibly come true. And her love for him, her admiration for him is not yet over. Is it not cowardice to evoke a woman's love without the intention of tendering to it? I revolted within.

Breaking a long silence, she said "He is not coward. Mr Reddy is not ready."