Monday, June 18, 2007

CONSUMED

He never realized when he stopped loving her. In all the mess created by their break up, all the love was gone. What remained was the idea that he loved her.

It all started with a thought that whispered in his ears that she somehow likes him. The girl was already engaged, just three months to be married; but was not in love with the person she was marrying to or that’s what she thought. And the guy was out of a long term relationship. Office colleagues, sitting side-by-side, were talking over the yahoo messenger day in and day out. It all seemed to be a great fun. Talking late nights over the phone... Saying I-Love-U’s counted to infinity… Crying to each other… Fighting with each other…

She said, “I won’t be able to handle it. We are going no where. I want to be yours but that is just impossible. Shit!! What the hell I am getting into. I told that bugger that I don’t love him. But now he is not listening. ‘It’s too late’ is what he says.”

He said, “Don’t worry. Go marry him. When things start souring and whenever you want to be back, do come. I will always be here, waiting for you.”

She said, “I love you.”

He said, “I love you, too.”

They kissed each other and exchanged rings as a symbol of their love. They thought they are married to each other. They just thought.

In the end days of warm winters of Mumbai, she got married. She got married to a guy she thought she never loved.

He was invited. And he did attend to his beloved’s marriage. She whispered into his ears that she still loved him and only him. He replied back.

The next day, she went onto honeymoon tour for a month to Australia. He was here, in Mumbai, waiting patiently and sometimes impatiently, for her return. And when she did, the summer arrived.

She said, “Let’s be friends. It can’t happen, sweetheart. Please try to understand my position. My dad will die of insult if I do something like…like…leaving my husband. Now that’s my life. Even though I don’t like it, I have to accept it. And you too.”

He said, “But I can’t live without you. It’s impossible, dammit. When you love me and I love you, what’s the problem? ”

She said, “That’s the whole problem, sweetheart.”

She was gone. He was left to the wilderness of that thing called, Love.

He kept calling her, messaging her, chatting with her online, in a hope that some day, just some day she will return to him with a desire to stay with him, for the sake of their love. On every interaction, she held a different flavor of her mood. Sometimes she was friendly, sometimes rude; sometimes attentive, sometimes avoiding; sometimes caring, sometimes ignorant.

She said, “Baby, it’s time you should concentrate more on your career. Whatever was to happen between us has happened. And things were probably had to end this way. Please don’t waste your life like this. I like you, baby, but can’t do anything. You know what, when I see my husband, my in-laws and the way they treat me so lovingly, I feel guilty that I am doing wrong to them. I can’t bear it, sweetheart.”

And he smiled.

After three months, one fine day his friend called the Girl. “He consumed poison; tried killing himself. He is in hospital and wants to see you badly…if only you could make it once.”

She felt disgusted; disgusted by the behavior of her ex-lover. “How could he be so weak?” She thought.

He was lying on the hospital bed, half-alive. She was sitting on a stool.

She said, “Why you did this, baby?”

He said, “For you. I love you so much that I just can’t live without you. I love you.”

He died that night.


It was all in the news papers next morning. A retired couple was reading their morning paper over a cup of tea.

The Lady said, “She was a bitch. She killed him. She played around with him…..How innocently the guy loved her!!”

The Gentleman smiled. The lady retreated and told him not to give any of his unusual, so-called practical comment over this issue at least. And his smiled turned into a sweet laughter. He said, “Ok. Let’s do it your way this time, in a pure emotional way. Why do you think the guy loved her?” “What do you mean? Don’t you see he was ready to wait for her forever?”

“And did he wait?”

“But she was changed!! How could he bear that?”

“Did the guy not know that she was about to be married? Don’t know who initiated the thought but if he did, he was stupid and if she did, he could have easily stopped her.”

“Now hold that thought!! Love does not see all these things. It happens whenever and to whom-so-ever it wishes to. And he loved her so badly!!!”

“So you want to say that it happened because of love? Good. So one thing is clear that the girl is not responsible for the death but the love is. May be. But whose love? You said she never loved him and played around with him. So it can’t be her love. And you think he loved her?”

“Now you are trying to be reasonable….but….love….”

“No darling. I am being very-very emotional. Love is one thought that starts from the core of a person. If somebody says I-Love-You, He/She should know very well about this ‘I’. He lost himself in this game of love. His existence seized. May be he loved her but his love died then only when she was sleeping cozily with her husband and not responding to his calls; when she was roaming all around the city with her husband and ignoring him every time he met her. And it died not only against her but the whole world. He was not capable of love. A person who could not love himself cannot love anyone else.”

“What are you talking?”

“Do you want to know what killed him? It was an Idea.”

“An Idea???”

“Yes. An Idea of his long lost loved. He stopped loving her. But the thought remained. He just thought that he loved her. He felt insulted whenever he thought that she is not with him. From being his beloved, she turned to an object of stubbornness. He never let her go. Love is all about playing it easy. One can’t force love. One can’t plead love. And as you said ‘It happens whenever and to whom-so-ever it wishes to.’ It also ends whenever it wishes to. He never died because love never kills. He was consumed to death, by the idea of his love.”

They sipped in their remaining tea in silence.

4 comments:

Rakesh Kotriwal said...

Guys, I must say that this person named "Rohit Kumar, SSGK" has become a terrific writer.. Well he was always but never exposed his thoughts like this... Rohit, take my suggestion and start making your career in Script Writing and all. IT is not for u dear...

Aldrin M said...

This is deep, man. Nice!

Anonymous said...

He got up in the morning, his face all sullen, eyes all swollen. He had cried all night. He did not go into their room. He did not want to show his tears to her. Their marriage was not working out. It was not even two months over, and their love of all these years seemed to have disappeared. Misunderstandings had taken place. He did not trust her anymore. She did not feel like responding to his cynical behavior. She felt sick of his thoughts and his words. How could he think of her like that? He felt lonely. That man had come between them. That man had destroyed his faith in her. “Why has this got to happen to me? I loved you so much. How could you do this? There is nothing left for me to live.”
“Its not true, otherwise why would I marry you? I could have easily got out of this marriage and no one would have been able to stop me” she replied.

“Then why didn’t you ever tell me about all this? Don’t I deserve to know?”

“Yes, you do? But were you even accessible to me? I wanted to tell you so many things before we got married. But were you even there for me? All you did was fight with me.
And in any case, there was nothing to tell you about. He had broken off from his long-time girlfriend, and being a good friend I was just being there for him. What can I do if he misunderstood all and fell for me.”


He didn’t say anything. He did not listen to her. All he believed was what he saw, what his instinct told him, what he thought was true. Days went by, and they fought, every day, all through the nights.

One day she got a call. That man had tried to commit suicide. He had cut his hand and taken sleeping pills. She could not handle it. She tried to comfort that man, explain him what he is doing wont get him anywhere. He wouldn’t listen.
Her husband came to know of all this. He confronted that man, and asked him to get out of their lives. He confronted her and asked her to stop all communication with him. She agreed. A little while later that man too stopped all communication.

Things were returning to normal in their lives. So they thought. But somewhere in his heart remained a lot of unanswered questions. He could not get over all that happened. He kept thinking about it all the while. He wanted to know what went wrong. What had happened? He had lost all faith in her. He felt disgusted of himself. His disgust led him to a path of self destruction. He became sadistic, irritated and arrogant.
She tried to help him out of all this. She would take into her stride all his behavior and comfort him every moment she could.
They together tried to re-build their lives. They tried to bring back the spark that was there, the love that they shared, and the togetherness they longed for.
But they were bleeding. Their souls were injured, their hearts broken. The trust seemed to be lost forever. They did not look into each others eyes anymore, with the longing that they used to. They did not hug each other like before. Their kisses did not share the same passion as before.
A few months passed by like that. One day after the monsoons of Mumbai, she got a call from a friend common to her and that man.
That man was getting married. He was about to start a new life, giving it a new beginning. God bless them in their new marital bliss.

shilpa shokeen said...

wowww...rohit!! vry touching and hw in simplistic manner u hv writtn ds...amazing :)