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…
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