Main kabhi yeh keheta nahi ....

‘You better take … (loss of voice, soreness) … good care of yourself. Be very cautious of your health and …’ she couldn’t actually control the dizziness in the voice and the soreness of the vocal cords because. All I could do was to keep nodding, I had lost the count of the number of times she had repeated her instructions now. She would just not get tired of it and do it every time without fail.

‘It is just a matter of six months and then I will be back.  What’s the big deal?’

She waited, smiled and said ‘You would know it when you will be a father. Then I will see if you will consider it as a big deal or what.’ I could not say anything, just had to keep quite.

My mum is not very fond of us (me and bro) getting away. She hates my job which might demand extended stays away and sometimes even abroad. Every time when I use to leave, she will be ready with her instructions and gushy see-offs. And I do not like them one bit. I hate when she cries, especially on these occasions as I feel that I am making her cry. This makes me feel bad, more so because it prompts me of the fact that I would really not be around in person for her. On top of that, I cannot express this explicitly which aggravates the pain further.

While it was already the time to leave, we both did not realize that. In fact it seemed that the cruel clock was sprinting in the sheer fun of seeing me getting parted of my mum. While, no doubt, that she was crying, I also strangely experienced some blurred vision. I touched my eyes and felt the chilliness around with the swift breeze rubbing over my tears ….  

Mum … I too am scared of darkness … (par andhere se darta hu main maa).

The utter “chronic” discomfort ....... its killing me.

The last couple of days have been terrible to say the least. I cannot think of anything else but her. I have been eating less, losing interest in surfing, rope skipping (the flashy past-time I have been flaunting over since a few months now), driving etal. All of a sudden, especially from the last few days, those memories are haunting me again. That simplicity and innocence is haunting. That aura of positive energy that surrounded her is haunting. The fact that I might be deprived of that flawless smile and persona for the rest of the lifetime is almost causing the adrenalin to freeze and choke and ‘the bodily fluids causing acute depressions’ to shoot up.

This déjà vu, I have experienced a trillion times in last few years it seems. The entities, to which I do get attached emotionally, get denied always. Be it the great educational institutions I could never be a part of, the toughest ‘tests’ I could never crack, the most relishing job profiles I could never compete for and others. The only part missing till date was that none of the entities were causing any emotional pain. Thanks however to this girl now that I am suffering this painful emotional trauma that was a miss earlier. 

I wonder if I could have done anything different that day. That day when I met her and her family, could I have expressed myself a little better? Could I have had taken extra care in discussion with her younger brother over his career; and with her father when he asked me about my career interests and goals; and with her cousin brother when he did asked suggestions over a career with engineering; and had ‘shy’ed away over her grandmother not asking anything but observing ‘I don’t know what’. Could I have had approved to her explicitly and could I have had told her, how much I …?

Alas, nothing of such sort did happened and all I had been left to deal with is ambiguity and hopeless in silence. I wonder, a plain denial would have had been a thousand times better, but that was not to be and here I am suffering with sleepless nights underway.

Amen …