The Silent Secret

“I have not seen you for quite a while and can’t recollect your face.” She said earnestly.  She had a peculiar tendency of forgetting people’s face while remembering their names.

“Don’t bother. I remember you, your face.” He said as a matter of fact.

“You have learnt how to talk smooth, haven’t you?” she said giggling.

“No, your face has been the one which remained with me always. It haunted me everywhere I went to run away from my demons. It was the only thing that brought me back home because I knew my home is in the city you lived. I returned every night and fell asleep hoping to see you the next day. These went on for years. I didn’t even know you moved out of the city. I didn’t fall into bad company because I thought I might lose you. I never got near any intoxication because I was afraid that it would make your memory in my soul blur. I kept on fighting the demons within me hoping that the next time you saw me you found me the same. I failed sometimes and I won sometimes but I refused to kill the old me, the innocent me completely because I had always known that one day I will face you. I was strangely afraid of you, your righteousness. I wanted to erase my memories from everyone’s life but I didn’t because I hoped you will come. I fell in love again but it never changed what I felt for you. I am falling in love with you always; I am in love with you now. I do not want to possess you. I already have you deep in me. You are the epitome of a woman for me. A portrait of a woman…”

“But I was a girl then….I don’t love you but still love you…” She cut him short as she didn’t want to hear what she knew already. She heaved a sigh of relief feeling that all these years she was right and a sigh of disappointment that she didn’t have the confidence to wait.

She remembered the time they shared a common space together silently, two decades back. They never spoke or even tried to communicate like other teenagers. They knew each other well from the first day. Each other’s mirror reflection. Their mutual silence spoke. They had never talked so much to each other as they talked now but they didn’t feel awkward. It was as if they had always talked and known each other thoroughly.

It had been two decades and every time she struggled with her confidence and self esteem. She remembered him. He was the one who appreciated her work, appreciated her and acknowledged her when no one did. Every seminar in the college, every interview she faced she thought of him.

“If he has approved then others will. If they don’t approve at least he will.”

She didn’t wait for him as she never completely fell in love with him.

And now as they sat face to face in a Café, discussing the marketing strategy of their upcoming venture, they took this break to discuss things long pending to be told and never talked of. She had just retired after a bright career spanning seventeen years from twenty to thirty seven. She was married happily and was a proud mother. He was an entrepreneur who never stopped; juggling life between family (wife and kids) and dreams. They both had it all except themselves. But did they need each other as lovers?

Incomplete Love stories are a myth. They do not destroy your life. They motivate you to reach higher. Love can never be incomplete. If it’s incomplete then it is not love. Life Partners in life can be your Mother, Brother, Best Friend all those who share life with you.  Love can never destroy. If you are killing yourself for it think again is it love?

“I thought I will not live till twenty five the way I was going. You know what I mean. Thanks for being the silent secret of my life. Thanks for being there as a friend through all these years; invisibly motivating me through thick and thin.” She said holding his hand and squeezing it softly with eyes filled with tears of gratitude.

“Thanks, the feeling is mutual.” He said sipping in the coffee

They sat silently for a while.

“Hey where is my treat? I need my fees for motivation.” He spoke playfully breaking in the silent.

“Get Lost!” she said with a giggle and beaming eyes while hitting his head lightly with the magazine she was reading.

They resumed talking and gossiping as they had never stopped…

Friends forever……..

Clipped Wings??

Will you be flying Honey?
No you won't be flying honey.
Why said I? Oh Why said I?
Can't you see it from your eye?
Your wings are meticulously clipped
Just to avoid your being slipped.
Your bound not to sore high
So, should I sit back with a sigh
No, fly but not tither.
Make sure this path here
Is the one chosen for thou.
But I can't fly can only crawl slow

I don't want to crawl, no, never
I just hope myself to be my saver
And I fly with my clipped wings
Let the world shout, let them sing
The old cacophony of the norms
I am not going to bargain soul for a form.

I am not striving the road supposed to be taken
And my faith in myself won't be shaken
Nay the storms come and shake me hard
Let the adversities be my miseries' bard
Let the world be angry and let it diffuse
While I will be worshiping my muse.

It will pain and doubts will rule the road
But never will my dreams be sung an ode
I am and so, I dream
Without it I cease to exist
So, while breaking in free verse
I let my dreams fly high
As my destiny is nothing but my right
I go and go and strive harder
Yes, this love costs
But not living the dream costs harder.
There is no shackle otherthan self  adorned
We are our own limitations
We are our own limits....
We are our own Freedom...

Together Forever....

"Can we go there?"asked she, as if pleading replete with child like innocence.

"No, we cannot..." he said with a smile, just being contended that his scarred maturity had finally met this clear spring of thoughts.

"Why not? look it's so beautiful, we will watch the sunrise and sit quietly.." she said while tugging to her hand and trying him to move into that direction.

"Because you are clumsy on plain roads and you might fall on this rough terrain with a cycle." He said still calm while steadily holding onto his cycle.

"I find roads unnatural. This......is NATURAL" She said aloud pointing at the mud trail.

"NO!"

"All right, stay here, I am going." She said sulking and climbed her cycle and rode by.

"This Girl!" he said exasperated as he climbed the cycle and followed her.

The road was a mud trail, their destiny was a small hillock, The road went past a small agrarian village, it was dawn. The sun was yet to rise but it was already clear. They were speeding by in their cycles lest they might miss out on sunrise.

One could feel the morning dew in the grass and taste the morning breeze hitting their face. The peacocks rose early and were calling. As they passed they saw a peacock flying from one tree to another, long tailed, shimmering blue and green, just out of a dream they fly.

The trail had it's bumps and now they reached the hillock. They climbed as far they could cycling and then they walked the rest of the uphill.

As he walked, he looked at her and thought about her, the innocence of her soul was reflected on her body, pristine, that is what she was. He was scarred, broken betrayed, he was never taken care of. He was not sad, he was not brooding. He was working his hearts out. He was Thirty, he had a family at home but still he waited for her, that face, her face haunted her...

She was baby faced assassin, her flawless frame hid her scarred soul. She never was a child, she never was a teenager. She hid her scars, retained her innocence and smiled. She loved and was loved but wanted to belong, she had no friends, she didn't want any. She was a smiling recluse who just saw things understood them but never spoke. But her spirit was undying. She was Seventeen, had a life with all it's passion and shades but still she waited form him, created a face out of many to remember that face, his face...this face she didn't want to forget.

As he walked into the room she vanished, her smile vanished. He sat in his desk in the office, working as efficiently as one could. The road, the hillock, the river all vanished. He had seen her once passing in a crowded Railway Terminus and waited for her, thought about her, confident that in her lies his peace, his turbulence, his life. He didn't know when and how will he see her again. Whether she will ever know that he exists in this universe. Will her face ever have a name to go with it for him but he did not mind, he did not search for her. He just waited while not waiting at all.

As she sat their on the hillock, her brother came from the back and startled her and she feigned being scared, his face vanished again, the conversation she was having now was a scent in the air. She had seen him once in the Railway Terminus. The way he looked assured her that someone was there. No, she didn't wait. She kept on falling in love over and over again.

Miles apart yet communicating while they lived in the world where they were present but not involved......some love stories never end because they do not start......