Attachments

Chapter 38

Under a thick blanket of a sky crammed with sparkling stars, the five of us sat around a campfire, a short distance away from the vast, still lake which opened before us; the full-moon beautifully and crystal clearly reflected on the still water, and the sight was a treat to the eyes. The stillness and loud silence in the area that surrounded us was spooky, yet calming; a dense network of trees crowded around the lake, dancing to its sides to the harmonic tunes of the chilly breeze, which pierced straight through my skin. Clinging onto the thick blanket wrapped around my body, I dragged a sharp breath in and looked around, while Darshan tugged the strings of the guitar and shared an inaudible conversation with Vaish; I could hear the loud and hushed whispers. The blazing campfire stood right in the middle of us, separating us, and I didn't bother looking in his direction; but I wasn't the one who ignored him, he was simply so immersed in Vaish, no one mattered to him. With the excuse of 'talking about professional matters', they spent all their time together, without paying attention to anyone around them; I wondered why Darshan called the three of us, when he invested every second on Vaish. I shook them off my mind, stood up from the grassy ground and strolled towards the motionless and captivating lake. I pulled my pants up and sat down on the ground, slowly dipping my feet in the ice-cold water before immersing my legs inside; it was freezing cold and numbing, but it felt good. In slow motion, I kicked my legs back and forth, and created whirlpools, disrupting the stillness of the lake that the image of the moon began floating.

I felt like a different person that night; I was a canvas painted in black and white, and that was something I'd never been before. That night, every little thing I did was forced; the smiles, the laughter, the calmness and the happiness were something I chose to put on display. I was never aware about the silence in me, until that night happened. Most of all, I had absolutely no idea about how painstakingly hard love was and how deeply attachments stab you in the heart, until that night. The closeness between Vaish and Darshan tore something apart in me, every time my eyes fell on them; it did something indescribably painful to my heart. The times I'd look in their direction, I figured out how desperate I was to be in Vaish's shoes; I wanted to stare into the twinkles in his eyes, as he gazed at me with a beautiful smile stretched on his lips. As cliché as it sounds, I wanted to sit beside him, share a blanket and listen to the softness in his voice on a stone-cold night. But I didn't belong there; it was a world I didn't fit in.

"May I?", a husky voice emerged, but I was certain that it wasn't Darshan; Zain towered over me, with a charismatic beam lightening up his face. "Please", I smiled back at him and looked back at the shimmers in the night sky, while Zain rolled up his denim and struggled to sit beside me. "This loudspeaker makes no noise, I reckon", Zain prompted, turning his head in my direction, and I smiled. "Is something wrong?", Zain questioned. "What makes you raise that question? You hardly know me", I shrugged, staring into the grayness in Zain's eyes. "But Darshan has talked enough and more about you to me, for me to know who you are, even though I have never met you before", I listened to Zain talk, as I scraped off the nail-polish off my nails. "I must admit that he has read you well; inside out", Zain casually said, and I simply listened on; I didn't want to talk about him. We shared the space in pin-drop silence and kicked our immersed feet back and forth, while gazing at the emptiness before us; the nothingness was intriguing and relaxing. "Do you believe in the thought that a person can be your weakness?", out of nowhere, I picked up that question and served it to Zain, who stayed silent for a while before breathing in audibly. "Not just that, but I believe that having a person as your weakness is the most damaging thing ever", Zain backed me up.

"What brings you to say that?", I twirled the ends of my hair around my index finger, slowly. "Experience, obviously; I had a bitter past, one I couldn't shake off for months because I felt that no one could have loved me the way she did, and because I loved her with all my heart, I thought I'd never find a way to love anyone else. She was my weakness...is an understatement. Love is extremely controlling, I swear; you cannot love with a limit, no matter how hard you try. Somehow, it's going to make the most out of you and take full control of you, even when you're clear in your mind that you're going to balance it out. There's no balance in love; love is limitless. I was hanging in between for six months, after our break-up; I didn't go anywhere in life because I didn't know where to go, or what to do", Zain paused. "It might be a stupid thing to say, but my life lost meaning. I can always talk about how deeply I loved her, or what she meant to me. But you know what? She lost someone who fearlessly and stupidly threw himself in the love he had for her; she lost someone who would have loved her through thick and thin, and would have protected her. I would have moved the mountains for her; that was how deeply I loved her...but she lost it and I think that's okay, people make mistakes", Zain casually said and we laughed. "How did you cope with it?", I was curious. "To be frank, I don't know" Zain actually sounded clueless. "So, you woke up one morning and moved on, much?", I smiled and Zain chuckled. "Definitely not as simple as that", Zain shook his head to the sides, slowly, and cracked his knuckles, looking thoughtful.