Meera

My whole life I’ve been a hard black shell to emotions. Not that I dint feel any but that I dint want to feel them intense and then get hurt. Call me insecured if you will, but I’ve seen many a tormenting pain in the eyes of my friends and it wasn’t a pretty sight. And each day I thank the lord that he hasn’t put me on that podium yet. And each day I find my shell growing harder.

I have neither known Meera long enough nor close enough, but as far as I knew her she was a dear one to me. I’ve known her life to a certain extent to know the longing dreams she then had. Hers was an emotion that sank into me deep enough and made me write this. I’m not philanthropic. I don’t put in my time to fight for the good of mankind. But I make an effort not to be the reason for someone I love to be hurt. I guess that makes me justified.

I once saw on Ripley’s believe it or not. It was an episode of a man who loved his wife very much. They had named their home “the house of love”. After his wife passed away, he did not bury her. He mummified her body and kept it her in a basement room built on his farm. She had been gone for 26 years then. On the show he said “they say time is a healer, it makes you forget, it lightens the pain, but it’s not true, it’s not true, I miss her more everyday”.

To me Meera appears the same as him when I read a piece she wrote “he is not my past to forget, he is my present and I will wait for him to come back and take me with him. I’ll yearn for him, serve my time and wait for us to be together again”. She lost the love of her life to a horrid bike accident just a few months after her wedding. I know not of the details of the incident nor much of her life. But I sure do comprehend a certain amount of her current emotions.

Life chooses such strange ways to hurt people. Imagine to wake up each morning and to find the one you love not resting beside you but in an ornate frame against a wall. Thinking of the times of his arms were around you and hug the photo close and your heart hurts even to beat. Every article in the house has a story. Every brick and sand on the road has a memory. You can run away to a different place, but can you run away from the memories inside your head, inside your heart? You wouldn’t even chose to run as those memories are more precious than all the riches in the world put together. The pain, the grief is beyond verbal description. It sinks deep to the very roots of your happiness and shakes it up like an earthquake. The Richter’s scale could brake if such painful tremors of the heart were measured.

How many dreams crashed? How many wishes unfulfilled. Would their souls rest in peace? Would their memories be forgotten? I don’t think so. The pain only sinks deeper by the passing day like a tree rotting from with in. Does life have to take such sharp turns to show that true love still does exist? Every time you have to do something which he/she used to do for the pain comes back. The memories flush on you. It takes you to a point where normal breathing which we do unconsciously become painful at each breathe. And in the solitude of your heart you keep asking “why me, why me”. There are no answers to that question. Answers if any given would still not satisfy the questioner.

Those moments would make you distinctly remember every incident in which you had hurt that person. It make you want to rewind life and make right all those mistakes. But alas life has no stop and rewind button. The advent of time machines is still a questionable factor. Though clairvoyance is a much proved subject it has no power to reverse things. How could life turn so unreasonable?

True love

Those who were the reason for wars live to comment on the aftermath while the families of the innocent victims mourn the memories of the dear ones passed. I came across this article of an American solider that became practically deformed on the face due to the ill-effects of the Iraq war. The boy had a pretty handsome face until the traumas of the war mutilated it. The once sharp and handsome features of his face appeared like a badly moulded clay in the hands of a child. The woman he loved married him despite the way he turned out to look. Does life have to take such sharp turns to show that true love still does exist?

Sriram

A childhood friend of mine was kidnapped for ransom and murdered. His body lay rotting in a well for 40 days before it was found. His body was wrapped in bandage and brought in a sealed glass box. The forensic report said there were numerous cut marks on his body and he was throttled to death. When I went to his house and saw the way they had brought him, my heart stopped to beat. Time stopped still. I stood glued to the door way unable to move. I don’t know how long I stood there but when I came back to the present, I turned around and ran home. All this had happened before the ransom was given. The parents promptly gave the ransom twice. If they only wanted money why murder him. The kidnappers were well known. It was his car driver. When they nabbed the kidnappers they only got a few years to serve behind prison bars. But would that bring him back?

We studied from kinder garden to standard six together. He was one of the smartest kids in class with his father’s business empire waiting to be handed to him. He was a really nice person. One could never see him angry. He had always been even tempered. That day after school I had gone to the library and came back. Everyone had left class. Sriram was there sitting on the bench waiting for Zameel I guess. We were chitchatting for a while. It got late for me to get to the school van lest I take public transport which I wasn’t very fond of. So I picked my bag to leave, he asked to stay and keep him company until his friends came. Told him it was already a bit and I rushed off. Thinking back it wouldn’t have hurt to have stayed a while even if had to make me miss my van. Every time I entered the class I could feel his absence. I would sit starring at the seat he used to sit, which was right next to me. That was the only thing the school spoke about the rest of that academic year. It’s been 12 yrs since, but till date that classroom still haunts me of his memories. The last conversation in class is still vivid in my memory. The school grounds we played together. The silly fights we used have each day. Memories dated for eight years. The school put up a life size picture of him in an ornate frame in the entrance lobby. He had slight smile and a calm and serene face. Every time I passed it the pain increased. His family sponsored the prises and certificates for all school events after that. His picture was on every certificate I got from then on. It never let me forget. I don’t have to see his picture to remember his face. It’s engraved in my head. The school named awards in his memory. I can name memories, a few of them still vivid. When I remember the time spent with him, the memories rush back all pleasant and happy except one and that one hurts as it was the memory of the time i saw him in a glass case.