The only thing visible at that moment was the ball of extinguishing
fire, with grey sky behind it. Flocks of seagulls were returning to
their homes. This coalescent among them made me relish their peace and
calmness. I wondered if they had ever encountered sorrows or if they
were content with their fates. I felt, the ocean today was also
frustrated as if protesting against something undesired; because every
time a wave greeted my feet it had audaciously borrowed some sand beneath my feet and I had to struggle a little to keep my balance.
I abstractedly shifted my gaze from the angry ocean to the other depth
of calmness and the soft being. She was still fixed and motionless on
the rock piece as she was some time back. She could easily be deceived
for a sculpture; only her black hair and scarf fluttering on her
shoulders felt alive. Her sight, I felt, somehow was trying to find
something out of the waves ferociously chasing each other. I
unintentionally glanced at her for a while and failed to decide if her
expressions were more indulged in anguish or the scene I had just
witnessed a short time before. This particular-but-now-so-common-picture
made me sad more than ever.
I had always been helpless in
finding her glittering eyes a way out of this hallow of grief. I could
have never managed to forget the vividness of her dreams that always
felt dancing in her eyes even when she was asleep and when awake, I had
never dared meeting those sparks claiming to be the conqueror of unseen
lands. A hurt ached my entire body as a pulse behind the bruises. I took
a deep breath and my hand rested on my chest over my heart. I did not
understand why she had sentenced her feelings lifelong; this is what I
think because she had never confessed or blamed anyone but herself.
Her eyes, once flashy with the brightness of dreams depict the
agitation of oceans now. I sighed and stretched my arm to call her back
to the reality and hardly touched her shoulder. She lurched as if
something pricked her in her profound slumber, probably she was not
ready for that disturbance. She turned her head, she glinted me
questioningly.
“It’s already evening Jiya, we should be back home by
now.” I explained her keeping her transitional mental state in mind. I
gasped with pain at her empty face, trying to comprehend. She was the
one whose mind always worked and understood with others gestures only.
“Why Haadi?” I stopped myself from shrieking in misery and the unshed tears dissolved in my throat.
“Let’s go.” I reminded her not looking at her.
She tried to get up from the rock she was sitting on. She slipped; I
couldn’t understand was it due to the depth of ocean beneath her foot or
the depth of her thoughts wandering in her mind. I involuntarily leaned
forward to hold her. I clinched her hand and helped her through the
clumsy waves. I recalled, I had always asked her to walk on the beach
but she every time had so lovingly refused and dragged me to this rocky
shore.
I got back to reality when she clenched my hand just a
fraction of her grip. I knew she wanted to ask me something. I knew what
she wanted to ask me exactly. I held my breath and she did not move
either. I knew she wanted me to look at her and it was the least
desirable action for me to do with her hand in mine. I had never helped
myself forbidding from doing anything she wanted me to do. I was
helpless this time as well. I looked at her face trying to avoid meeting
her gaze.
“Haadi ! You have forgiven me. Eh?”
I knew she
knows the answer. I knew that she knows I won’t say what she wanted me
to say. I turned my head to look at her and a painful hurt peeped in my
eyes. I turned around to face her and managed a smile somehow. I covered
the distance of a step parting us and clapped her frozen cheek
soothingly from the other hand and this time I couldn’t help myself
looking into her eyes.
“Yes, forever.”
I realized my voice was
no more than a mumble. A tear rolled down her cheek and absorbed in my
fingers. I, unknowingly, gently wiped off the trail of tear and asked
her,
“Should we go now?”
She, after a long time that felt like
decades, lifted her eyes and met my gaze. I felt my heart missing a
beat and then pounding so fast probably faster than ever. Her hand was
still held in one of mine and the other on her cheek and her vigilantly
looking into my eyes. It wasn’t delinquency of either of us if I felt
this moment as an eternity. Every beat of my heart craved to live this
moment for all the times to come. I so wanted to kiss her dull eyes in
an urge to color them again with dreams, her lost dreams. It was
something foreign to my temper and emotions or it was the height of
despair to see her happy. In a moment’s time when I was about to go for
it under some trance, the very instant she smiled, raised her captive
hand, pulled it from my grip and removed my hand from her cheek with the
other. She wrapped my both hands in hers for half a moment and I felt
as my life was draining out of my hands. She freed my hands and
whispered,
“Yes, forever” that I hardly could understand.
The moment when the meaning flashed on me, my heart sank in the most
horrible depth of unsurety. I do not know how long had I been drowning
in the other ocean of unseen burn. When I returned to my conscious, the
time had come that I always dreaded the most. She was gone. Yes.
Forever.
I loved her, she knew that. I wanted to tell her she
knew that either but she did not let me confess it. Why? I never
understood but it revealed on me the moment I had just lived. Few things
are supposed to be comprehended at the particular point of time already
defined by the fate. I don’t know the time defined for my disclosure
was the best or the worst but it had decided for me.
Now when
I’ve been through all this I can’t also deny the fact that the instance
of revelation makes everything visible. No matter how much we protest,
just like the waves scribbled the lesson for me on the shore, with the
sand that it had been taking away all the times. It took me time to
realize but there are few questions I still do not manage to find the
answers of.
“Love is not mathematics for what figures can be
calculated for nor is Fate physics that should be according to some
principles then why do they become mutually exclusive when it comes to
life.”
