Safarnaama

Eight✨

Love in its first stage feels like a romantic movie with violins and guitars playing in the background. And it felt no different to me. The violin played mellow tunes of our slow romance, the weather felt fairytale and roses became the definition of love.

Love in its growing stage feels like a rom-com with dramatic music. Where we walked hand in hand but the flowers became less attractive. The violins played frightening calm music. And the weather turned harsh. It was calm before the storm.

Love in its final stage feels like a sad romantic movie. It's all about holding on to memories for a lifetime and wrapping dried petals of those roses close to the heart. Soft tunes were replaced by melancholic ones. And the weather made no sense.

- and now falling out of love feels harder than falling in love.

And with that Shehnaaz closed the book. There was this void. And no matter how much she pretended, this emptiness was consuming her entire being. So much so that her neighbours started questioning her about the same.

She was happy or at least she was pretending. Only she knew how heavy it was for her to carry her 'fun-loving' personality. She knew she was lying to herself. And lying to yourself effects in a screwed-up view of the world, and reality. It may be pretty to look at the world through that lens of lies but once the lens is removed, you can't recall how to face the truth.

But whom was she fooling all this time? Sidharth's words from that day were still fresh in her mind.

"I think you should leave." He said.
His face. It held no emotions. No anger. No pain. Nothing at all.

"And if you want to stay, you can. But don't fckin interfere. You are no one. And I don't like discussing my life with strangers", he snapped.

Shehnaaz gulped the lump that formed in her throat. This was not what she expected. She knew she spoke something that triggered him. But his behaviour was unreasonably harsh. He had no right to speak that way. Or maybe he had. But he could have been a little bit softer.

But then his words made sense. She was no one. He was right. What were they? Mere strangers. But then why didn't he feel like one? There is no true obligation to strangers and if you mess up you don't have to talk to them again. But then was he really a stranger? And why was there this maddening urge inside her to see the world through his eyes? Why was this urge to help him come out of those gloomy lanes when she herself was struggling with life? She sighed, struggling to answer her questions.

"I think I should leave!" she whispered, more to herself and hurried with the carry bags.

Sidharth knew at that very moment that he shouldn't have said those words. She was not hunting for something nor was she intruding his personal space. But she spoke to his very soul. He realized that his reaction was absurd. But it was because no one had done that to him in a long while. Sidharth was a man with a rough exterior. At times he used to wonder if it was that hard for people to discover the veil he carried when in reality he was just a human being surrounded by his demons.

"Shehnaaz I'll drop you, it's not safe out there!", Sidharth offered with concern lacing his voice.

"No, I'll manage, some other time maybe, if we got to meet by some chance", with this she started collecting her things.

Sidharth watched her go, a part of him wanted to stop her and apologize for his words but the other part kept reminding him to maintain distance. Some other time maybe, MAYBE! She probably said that in anger, he reassured his heart.

Shehnaaz moved out of his house and booked a cab for her way back home. She was not angry with Sidharth but somewhere she was expecting him to at least bid her a proper goodbye. But then she reminded herself that he was just a stranger. A stranger that meant nothing.

Well, it was no different for Sidharth. He knew he had hurt her through his words. He was well aware of his increasing fondness for Shehnaaz, but he chose to name it as a concern. Since that day, he used to search her in the crowds to have a mere glimpse of her. Hoping that someday they'll cross paths unexpectedly like the former times. But he was very disappointed with his luck.

He was standing in the balcony gulping the bitter coffee while it was raining outside. That's when something got into him. And without giving it a thought, he started searching for a book and a pen, and started penning down the words

a piece of paper,
an old ball pen, half-filled,
the nutty aroma of black coffee,
-everything I need to write poetry

buried within are your sad memories
I hold on to them for my dear life
till the darkness engulfs me
and I breathe my last.

and to give our memories
a better end, I picked up a pen
and started filling the empty spaces
with some words, prose and snippets

-in halfway, I cussed, the pen stopped working
giving me a reality check like always,
this half inked ball pen reminding
me of our half-written love story.

With that, the sudden realization dawned on him. And it terrified him. For it was first time in a year, that he touched a pen to write something.

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Hello guys, how have y'all been? Sorry for not updating for so long!