Because I loved you....

“Love is patient; love is kind
and envies no one.
Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude;
never selfish, not quick to take offense.
There is nothing love cannot face;
there is no limit to its faith,
its hope, and endurance.
In a word, there are three things
that last forever: faith, hope, and love;
but the greatest of them all is love.”

~The Bible

All she knew was that she had never been this excited in her life.For her it was nothing short of a dream coming true. I mean who gets the chance to meet her childhood crush six years after she had first set her eyes on him?She stood in the shower, unable to stay still. For a profound yet erotic moment she could feel his arms closing around her petite self. She could imagine him kissing her gently on her neck and then....

"Roshni,will you be out already??"
"Yes Mom, YES."

***************

As Roshni changed her evening attire for about a millionth time she wondered what would it be like when she finally gets to meet Sid. Will she be able to speak anything? Was there any possibility that she could faint or worse still, throw up because of not eating anything out of sheer excitement? Without much ado, she looked into the mirror for the umpteenth time, and walked out of the room her feet still shaking out of nervousness. She wondered for the first time in her life of having known Siddhartha, -" Is it Okay to build castles in the air? To fight for and have conviction in a person she has met only once and knows very, very little about??"

Sid(as his friends called him)is a marine engineer by profession. His work made him travel, a lot, but somewhere down the line, he lost himself. And meeting Roshni was just like another futile attempt of getting back at life. It was but obvious that he did not like her even remotely enough to bump into her on a social networking site subtly demand an urgent meetup (it would not be apt to call it a "date"). In reality Sid had detested the sight of Roshni from the moment he had first seen her. She seemed quiet yet oddly intimidating for some reason. She stared at him without a care in the world and that made him uncomfortable as ever. As a fourteen year old she tried to contact him numerous times, but he had never felt the same. Her untimely calls embarrassed seventeen year old Sid, especially when he was with his friends.She was not his "type" he claimed and promptly told her the same. Roshni vowed never to fall in Love again, but when the same person decided to drop her a friend request, her old feelings came back to her and her happiness knew no bounds.

**************************************
Roshni arrived at the given location with her heart beating like a thousand times faster than usual. She felt scared, ecstatic,nostalgic all at the same time. Siddhartha was not there. She waited for what seemed liked eternity to find a bunch of hooligans getting down an auto and approaching her. She chanted in her mind-"God please let Sid not be one of them, Please, Please.."

"Roshni are you?"- one of them asked her. The similarity he had with Sid, was ridiculous.
"Let go"
"Oh. Hello I am Siddhartha. You laaabhhh me. Don't you?"
It was like all her dreams for the day came crashing down and merged into oblivion. "No, NO, I must get out of here before something else happened."- Roshni murmured to herself.
"Excuse me, I need to go."
"Itni jaldi kaha jaogi? Meri chhaammackchallo." said Sid smacking his lips in a dirty fashion.
"Leave me alone.", around this time the other guys too had surrounded her.
"Suna nehi Munni ko jane do.."
" LEAVE ME ALONE." - Roshni shouted.
"But you laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbhh me."
"Just let go. JUST LET GO."

This time surprisingly everyone had relented and Roshni started walking towards the direction she had come from, with tears in her eyes. She has almost reached when she looked back and unable to contain herself any longer she did something she yelled-
"Yes I loved you. As if that is going to matter anyway. You don't like me, BIG DEAL. But you have absolutely no right to hurt someone for loving you without reason or expectation. As far as I am concerned, I am tired of putting my self respect at stake time and again for an insensitive wretch like you. It will hard but yes Mr Siddhartha I AM DONE, I AM DONE being in love with you....."

What followed next was a distant wail and a screeching sound of a vehemently speeding vehicle. Siddhartha look back to find Roshni lying in pool of blood, severely injured. Ignoring his friends advice of fleeing the place, he rushed towards her and helplessly called her name, as though it would help in anyway. "It is my fault. All my fault. MY DAMNED FAULT. Please Roshni wake up, I promise not to hurt anyone again..Please, Please." Within moments the wary Sid was transformed into someone his old self could never identify with. He stood in the middle of the road, shouting for a cab to take her to the Hospital. In the meantime, Roshni was fast receding towards the other world, where she hoped life would be a little less painful...


This is the first part of a story which has been hovering in my mind for quite some time. Let me know whether I should proceed with the same.
Love,
Amrita

The Beginning of the End?

“And here it starts.”

It was my first time at a red light area. I did not really know what to expect. For a brief moment I was blinded. Blinded by the look of dingy alleys and the smell of a concoction of sweat and cheap perfume. It was early evening and the lane had just started filling up. I spotted about a dozen of women wearing clothes which clung onto their bodies unnecessarily. The excess powder on their round faces had already started wearing off due to the humid weather. I saw a boy who rather casually went inside one of the buildings with a young girl by his side. I felt my fingers clench as a sudden stiffness caught hold of my entire body like an epileptic fit. The children roamed around in the streets, their bodies filled with dirt and their feet sore. I was shocked to find a young boy of seven uttering profanities just like a priest chanting mantras in a temple. There was water flowing all over the place which made me recollect the supposedly simple fact that every young girl in the area was supposed to follow her mother’s footsteps and had to undergo training for it, where such huge amounts of water found its purpose. The buildings were dilapidated and structured in a strange fashion. Every house was connected to the other in some extremely clandestine and dangerous manner. I went inside such a building with a little kid who most graciously agreed to guide me. I found broken bottle of inexpensive liquor, drunken men strewing the unclean floors while the rest of the tenants were smoking ‘bidis’ as their ‘gharwali’ continued with her household chores. I finally reached the terrace and after panting heavily for a few moments, I looked up at the sky. It somehow appeared condescending, as if it were looking down on the people of this place. The other multi- storied buildings were visible but were located far away from my present location. Somehow it alluded me to a more meaningful metaphor, because at the end of it all these buildings are representative of people like us who never really bother about taking a closer look at such sensitive issues.

Yesterday was different. A little darker may be. I loved the children. Some of their names are written in my notebook. I will always remember them. I hope they remember me too. I hope I was not just another stranger in their lives with a desperate attempt to sympathize with them.