Confessions of a Hopeless Romantic - Episode III

Life went on, and I learnt to deal with the pangs of unreciprocated love. She was beyond my realm. I was the rustic soul who could only long for her company and love; she was the Princess in her ivory tower, wooed by suitors aspiring to be her Prince Charming.

Yet, one question continued to gnaw at my soul – why did she meet me? I couldn’t be so wrong. I had seen something in her eyes – something that looked a lot like love. The days passed by, weeks became months, months became a year. I graduated from college. Not just graduated, I was one of the toppers, and received a job with a fat pay packet for my efforts. Everything seemed new, but my love continued in it’s endless meanderings for reciprocation.

They say first love is the one that stays with you forever. It might not be the last affair you will ever have, nor the longest or happiest. Yet, the memory of it lingers on – shaping our reactions to any and all romantic liaisons thenceforth. First love is also the purest, because it is spontaneous. There are no practiced lines, no preconceived notions, no cynicism – it is naïve, and that’s the beauty of it. My first love had changed me. No longer was I the awe-struck Petrarchan lover, putting my lady love on a pedestal and worshipping her more than loving her. I was real now and so was my love.

It had been more than a year since I had last seen her. Perhaps she had just been a catalyst that Fate had sent my way, to push me out of my stupor of romantic idealism. Perhaps she had been a wake-up call to tell me that real life and real love were far removed from the dreamy world that candy floss cinema portrayed it in.

Yet the impact of it all had been remarkable. My mystery woman had filled up the empty canvas of my being, with the rich strokes of love, warmth and affection – making me more complete as a person. I was happy, from within and without. The jigsaw puzzle that I used to call life had fallen into place with love binding all the pieces together.

But it wasn’t meant to end like this – Destiny wouldn’t allow it. One evening, I found myself sitting in the very pizza outlet where I once worked as a waiter. Everyone in the staff knew me, so it hadn’t been difficult getting a seat at the table where I wanted to sit. And so there I was – sitting on the very chair that she had sat on, the first time I saw her. I tried to imagine what she would have thought when she had seen me looking at her. I tried to picture myself as I had lingered with her order a bit longer, just to see her for that extra minute.

I was still lost in my thoughts when she walked in and sat at the table in the far corner. She looked as beautiful as ever. I took a moment to ponder – if I didn’t do anything now, then I would probably regret it my entire life. Would I live to grow old thinking of what might have been, or would it be better to have the consolation that I tried? The decision was made and I made my way to her table. I wanted her to see me as the person I had become – the person her love had built out of me.

She looked up, and held my gaze. It was the same as ever – no words spoken yet so much told. She smiled at me, her lips arching back in that beautiful pattern that I loved so much. Her eyes were twinkling as before – so much mischief in those playful eyes. Her hair cascading down her shoulders, as if in embodiment of her independent and free spirit. I pulled out the chair opposite her, and sat down, my eyes fixed on her’s. My Princess was in front of me – so many times I had dreamt of this moment, so many nights I had spent thinking of what I would say when the moment came. And now that it had finally come, I was speechless.

She spoke in the most beautiful, warm and loving voice I had ever heard, “So you finally want to say something?”

I looked at her, and smiled…

Confessions of a Hopeless Romantic - Episode II

The next morning found me dreaming of her. How could I open my eyes, when all I saw with them closed was her smile? Those beautiful eyes twinkling with life – the windows to her soul. Her lips, like music they arched in a beautiful pattern to open and close together each time she smiled in all her coyness. She was a tease, and a gorgeous one at that.

I started sleepwalking through my days. Professors threw chalk-pieces at me as I indulged myself with her dreams while in class. My boss at Papa John’s asked me if I wanted sick leave. How could I explain myself to them? How could I tell them how much it pained me to spend time away from her? Each passing moment meant one moment less that I could spend with her in this lifetime. Only she could understand. One look – that’s all it would take. How I wished she would sit in front of me and look deep into my soul. How much love she would find there, and what she would say to it?

I was in love, and I was absolutely flipping. I didn’t even know her yet. What if she was already seeing someone? No matter – I would happily endure the pain if I could see her happy. Talk about the tragic romantic. Love was just another word – she gave it a meaning. Life was just a word – she gave it a purpose.

I had heard of guys feeling passionate, full of lust, desire et al. I felt the passion too, but it was too pure. I wanted to sit with her in my arms and look at her with all the love I could find in my heart. I wanted to wake up to her every morning and kiss her eyes every night when she went to sleep. I would stay awake  at night, watching over her as she would lie dreaming. What would I not do for her happiness? Anything.

Yet, all this was just introspection. She remained a distant dream, ever so elusive. And then it happened. It had been raining all day. I had just got over with work. I was walking home, thinking of her, when I saw her again. She was on the other side of the road – she was looking at me. I couldn’t be wrong. The lights reflected off the wet tarmac and lit up her face. She really was looking at me. I couldn’t stop myself. I forgot everything around me, forgot there were cars on the road. I just raced across – my eyes were glued on her’s. When I reached her, I felt my heart would jump out of my chest. She was more beautiful than I had imagined. 

She smiled – my coy princess. I smiled back. So much said, yet not a single word. She turned to walk – I followed her. We went on walking, just the two of us – the rain kissing our skin as we embraced it’s warmth. It seemed as if I was dreaming again - I pinched myself to see if it was real. Yet there she was, I was not dreaming. And so we walked on for a further two blocks, till she looked at me once more. She came close, her eyes peering deep into mine. How could she trust me so? Could she read my mind? She smiled as if to say yes. And then, before I knew what happened, she hailed down a cab, and was gone.

I looked after her like a defeated soldier. Why did she have to go? Why couldn’t I just live in that moment, oblivious to all that was happening around me? Why couldn’t I just grow old in that moment, with her by my side, holding my hand till death do us part, only to be reunited in a higher realm? Why?...

Confessions of a Hopeless Romantic -Episode I

It all started that evening. I never saw it coming. And yet, when it came I couldn’t help surrendering myself to it. Love happened to me, and I fell headlong into a heady concoction of pleasure, pain, happiness, grief and all the other contrasting emotions that embodies the sinking feeling called love.

I had rushed out of college to get to my evening shift. I worked evenings – the money was good and the job was respectable. Papa John’s Pizza – the best pizza money can buy, and my employer. When I had first joined, I had felt rather uneasy. My classmates used to drop in to eat, and often made fun of me when they saw me serving pizzas there. “Pizza-Boy” was what I was called in class. But I didn’t care anymore. I was getting the dough to keep me going, enough to pay my rent while I completed my education.

Ironical, that all my life I had avoided love and yet I found it at the place where I least expected it. I had expected to hear violins playing when I would see her. I know it sounds cheesy. But then I had been brought up on a staple diet of Bollywood movies where this was the typical syntax of love growing between the quintessential loser and the essential beauty.

Anyway, I didn’t really hear any violins playing when I saw her that evening. All I heard was my heart thumping hard against my chest. It was like an adrenalin rush, the paradox being that I felt weak. She sat at a table in the corner. She was with her friends. But I was blind to everything around her. I had eyes for her and her only. Her beauty was beyond beauty itself because it wasn’t just in her looks. Beauty poured forth from her lips as she moved them to speak. Such full and luscious lips she had – I could go on looking at them all my life as she spoke. Her eyes were full of life – as they seemed to prance about happily, even as she talked to her friends or looked around. I could get lost in those eyes forever and beyond. I wanted to grow old in front of her beautiful eyes. Her hair was like a canvas on which someone up there had painted with rich shades of black. One look and that was it. I was head over heels, truly madly deeply in love. I had always been a sucker for a girl with a mischievous disposition, and here she was – the fallen angel with her nonchalant charm and delicious smile. I was to serve her table. As I walked up to her, she caught my eye and looked at me. Life seemed to come to a standstill as we looked at each other. It might have lasted only a moment but it felt like a lifetime – as if so much passed between us.

The moment passed. I took her order. She smiled at me. Was it that she was reading my mind? Did my eyes give me away? I didn’t care. I was floating. As I went to pass on the order to the chef, my manager glared at me. Romance at work? Alarm bells were ringing inside my head. A warning sign seemed to flash at me – Not now, this isn’t the time. But alas, there wasn’t much to be done. I was already deep in it.

All evening I kept on stealing glances at her. Once I felt even she was looking at me. Could it be? Could she have also felt something? I had always found myself the ugly duckling of my lot. But could it be that this princess saw beyond what other’s had ever seen in me? The evening wore on. I was captivated by the effect that the lights of the cars passing outside made on her face. Her eyes glistened and burst into life in the light. The rain had just begun to pour outside. As the lights from the city outside got reflected on the million tiny droplets that had gathered on the glass windows and bounced off her face she seemed to shine forth with the very essence of ethereal beauty.

But I was on borrowed time. She was a dream, and all dreams are far removed from reality. Soon, it was time for her to go. My heart tugged at me. Should I go and tell her what I felt? Will she reciprocate? My mind settled my dilemma for me. This wasn’t a movie. This was real life. The consequences of me approaching her might not be too rosy.

She got up to leave. She paid the bill. Her friends were already outside. I looked on. Life was passing me by and I couldn’t stop it. My heart bled. I wanted her to look into my eyes, so that she would know all that I couldn’t put forth in words. Yet, all she would remember me as was a waiter at a pizza outlet. That would be my place in her life. Together perhaps we would have had beautiful memories. Perhaps we would have loved each other more than love itself could allow. Perhaps…

As she walked out, she turned once to look. I caught her eye. We looked at each other for one moment. So much said, yet no words required. Her lips moved like a flower in it’s first bloom, and formed a smile. I smiled back. And she was gone. Would she ever come back? Would we ever have anything? Would fate fill my bough with the flower of love? Perhaps…

A Dark Reality - Episode 2 (Victim of the Night)

The night bared it's fangs at me in bolts of lightning. I embraced it's fury. I was at the mercy of the elements, yet all I could do was admire the beauty of it all. The shadows lived and died around me, as the lights flickered ever so often. Cars crept slowly along the serpentine corridors of the old  city. Too much of noise they made - with all their honking and screeching. I turned a corner and slowly proceeded to put some distance between myself and the pandemonium. I walked past a pub, bustling with old-timers - men who had seen the world, experienced it's brutality, and now lived to enjoy their final moments in whatever sunshine they could find seeping through the foliage of darkness that life manifest itself in.

I was still rapt in romancing the night when an elderly couple walked past me. Suddenly I felt a chill, as if Death was close. I turned to see the couple enter a dark alley they should never have taken. I ran to call them back, but it was too late. A bloodcurdling shriek momentarily usurped the domination of the thunder and the rain over the other sounds of the night. As I entered the alley, I saw the old man lying in a heap, bleeding. He was breathing his last, while his partner sat weeping by his side.

The guy who had mugged them must have been a novice. He could have just run away with the money. But his inexperience had caused him to panic and he had stabbed the old man at the slightest provocation. The woman's cries of pain were drowned out by the thunder, which had reasserted it's dominance. The night was brutal to those who were weak, and the old man had been weak. As I stood there, there was a new entrant to the convention of night sounds – that of police sirens in the distance. The woman had probably dialled 911.

I turned and walked away. Crime scenes are always a pain to be in, what with the barrage of questions and all. Besides, I didn’t exactly feel like Santa tonight. The night had claimed it’s first victim; or perhaps many more had fallen before. I didn’t care – all I knew was that reality was too dark and too scathing in it’s treatment to those who failed to understand it, or respect it.

The storm had passed – the night seemed to be brooding now. Perhaps it was choosing it’s next victim. Somebody, somewhere was going to suffer. But it won’t be me. My time was yet to come. As the erstwhile poet said –

“…I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.”           

A Dark Reality - Episode 1 (From the eyes of the Passer-by)

                           The rain wreaked havoc on the night. Torrents of ice-cold droplets seemed to dig their teeth into the very flesh of the city. People scurried for cover, to save themselves from the fury of the heavens. Old friends bonded over steaming cups of Chamomile tea and Irish coffee, while lonelier souls bundled up amongst strangers to seek refuge from the chill.

            I stood and watched. Cynicism brimmed over in my mind as I saw a young couple kissing like lovers reunited after decades. “Young Blood…”, smirked my mind – “slave to the whims of sadistic hormones which make us go round and round in a cyclic chain of inevitable disappointment. Sooner or later, one of the two will move on to greener pastures, leaving the other broken, bruised and prone to suicide.” The scars of my last relation were still too fresh for me to get over my cynicism. A torrid affair it had been - full of lust, passion and a craving for excesses that I had never experienced before. When it ended, I realized I had fallen in love, but alas, the girl had not been of such noble disposition. She didn’t think twice before moving on. I smirked again, this time at my own naïveté, for having fallen into the snares of the very delusion that I perennially sniggered at.

            Yet, I was happy for having fallen in love. “It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all…” – goes the noble old saying. “Bullshit!”, is what I say. I did not have such noble beliefs. My mistake brought me joy because I reveled in the fact that I was imperfect. I liked being ‘real’.

            Will Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. The old geezer might have been right, but I had better things to do than being a character behind a mask.

            I was a gladiator, proud of the scars that life inflicted upon me, pain that my own mistakes caused me. It was my burden to bear and I loved it. I was real, all flesh and bones – not some rag-tag filthy loser who spent half his life deluding himself in the quest for perfection.

            This was my hamartia, but the paradox was that I loved my hamartia in spite of knowing how it could hurt me. “Enough introspection for one night”, my mind told me. I took one last look at the lovers lost in their Utopian bubble, and headed off into the night, replete with the wails of the city and the shadows cast by flickering street lamps – shadows that seemed to live and breathe an existence of their own.