The Role of Love

By Dhrijyoti Kalita
New Delhi, India

Why? This is, I realized, because of within me those youthful indiscretions still hovering. And, for the truth to get outspoken really from the mealy mouth, it takes time albeit. I spoke. Of late. I spoke…

At my desk, I lay asleep. That was but a trance. Not a snoring one. How can I fall upon? As such? As this? I was working. Stopped. All of a sudden. I started listening to music. Goths. Blues. Punks. Then, rock, rock, rock… I revived by leaps and bounds. Pepped up like the hearty child when…
The girl, I have always overlooked. That girl…that girl who came upon for me with humble requests for a simple game. Why did she want to play with me? Only with me? The Sunday thing tasted bitter. Tasted like sour. And, I tried every time for an escape, escape as it seemed like an abyss- her home. The Sundays were always meant for her tutorial classes under my tutelage. And that was a fake thing, man! We never studied. She never studied.
One day, here, I faced a trial. Trial for an alleged rape. She was never as such. She liked me, I knew. But, that was indeed when we were lingering at our tens or elevens. Now, she loved me….no, yes …perhaps. I cannot say it, ok! How sprightly she was to approach me only to be rewarded with a bitter candor of reproach from my odious tongue? I cannot impute to her for my being what I am now. Indeed, not for anything. But, I can say that she understood what I was then. Now? She tried making her conscious self as unconscious as plausible. Even after my successive abuses and grudges, she never failed to come the next day. For the game? For me…? Her mother was always there with her, supporting in inviting me to their house every Sunday. Chicken leg pieces, did she make that every Sunday? Oh! We played- hand in hand, and at times her cheek touched mine. She smiled. I blushed. I despised. One even day-that cannot be called odd, as I now cherish that in my snippets of the finest montage of memory-she kissed me and tried for French, oh no! How did I surrender? After that happened, she was always a coy girl. Loving me, probably more. That was a kind of union- like sex. At that point. At that period of freshness .
Now, the trial I faced was before her. I am old enough. She is old enough. For a healthy pre-marital sex. But, perhaps that coyness was not filtered out. It remained as the dirty -candid- sediment. In me, there is no more deference for coyness. That’s not lust, lechery, adultery or whatever. That’s not infraction on my part. That’s a fermented feeling. Growing inside me, cancerously trying to vanish me up, devour me up. At one point, I got love which made me a sort of irascible person. It was a lot more than what is called sufficient. I hated love. I abhorred extreme pamper, loyalty and care, catering. I tried aloofness. Why? Because there’s so much love in this world for me that I was unable to withstand.
See, how the ball goes to the other side of the fence. I was pampered even after my reiterating in a loud voice that, I wanted solitary recluse. I was not capable of handling love. I was crying out a soliloquy against love. Naturally, went unheard. Love corrupts and absolute love corrupts absolutely. Uh! Corrupts?
Fetish now overcame that aloofness. Nothing remained so as to maneuver, manipulate or modulate. Hunger overpowered abundance. Plague inundated the healthy inflow and influx of serenity. Thirst and draught ruled over overflowing streams and seas. –Of love. – Of pamper. - Of courting. - Of caress. Ode?
I do not want to be a Romanticist Keats and write odd odes for beloveds, mistresses and enamored ones. For some reason that’s not clear now, I felt that it’s not another quixotic attempt at finding love, quenching the draught afflicted soul.
I attempted her lips and bum, for the first. Now, like a thunderbolt, after thirteen years. She thwarted me bringing the center of mass to her hands, with a power stroke; she drove me away from her affinity. What a demonic visage? I shuddered when I saw the other incarnation of woman, another subtitle for the otherwise poised one. I pressed them enough hard for her to realize sufficiently that I have returned with a different anatomy-of thirst and hunger. She ultimately felt I was growing peevish under this anatomy.
She went to the other corner of the kitchen; at the meeting point of two marble slabs, where she wept. For a simple game? For me? It’s a game. Almost a game. Sex-sex game. You give and I give. Then we part.
She wanted to say something between her sobs but couldn’t, like a drunkard who suddenly lisps on account of overt fulfillment. She managed to halt. She told me to leave the place forthwith and naturally to allow her loneliness to be with her. She breathed a sigh and started the race again. Of cries. It sank into the oblivion as I closed the door with a bang. Bang!
I came back home with a bottle. Drank to the edge of the tongue and found myself dozing and finally slumbered. Eyes were aching, one drop fell. That unwanted salty feel. I gulped my saliva to strengthen. Thought about other truths, beauties in the street that circled around me. This utterly sounds nonsense. Why did I do that? Many I’ve met in this journey of twenty-three. I never wept in their departures. I am always confident enough of the next one’s arrival. I always drink happily in their arrivals as well as in their departures. This time the liquor entered my esophagus with a razor sensation. It hurt my throat and passage to the stomach, liver and all. I think amid all these organs also laid the principal life saving organ-the fist shaped, the four chambered and the real involuntary organ. It never listens to anyone, never waits for anyone. It always works on its own ideals. That governed me, hopefully. Yes, for certain. It is the real impetuous material. But cannot be sold out for it saves us. We have to work as it ordains.
Listeners may think the description cumbersome for its over emphatically used adjectives. But, it is expounded for the truth is also relevant at this age. The heart is the truth; it delves always to find out for us the sublimity. As it has supposedly found out for me…
From her attic floor, Angelica was broadening her horizon with a panoramic eye towards the sky, towards the great city that stood as if witness to last day’s indiscretion, improvidence. She was tranquilizing to forget the probably cacophonic mind, she has been undergoing from the last day. She has a large coffee cup in her left hand, the right hand confused with the phone. To dial…not to dial. To dial… not to dial. Ultimately, it’s done.
I was trying to work at my desk.
At my desk, I lay asleep. That was but a trance. Not a snoring one. How can I fall upon? As such? As this? I was working. Stopped. All of a sudden. I started listening to music. Goths. Blues. Punks. Then, rock, rock, rock… I revived by leaps and bounds. Pepped up like the hearty child when…the phone vibrated odd as it was touching my desk. The number-hers.
“I am sorry. Can you meet me today at the Lavazza Shoppe? We can talk over some coffee or tea.”
Silence on my side, as if engrossed in profound thoughts.
“Ok. Will see. At 5, ok?”
“Ok.”
At 5, I was there waiting for her in front of the coffee shop. She was exactly eleven minutes late, I said. We went inside and sat. People looked at us, as they look always, carefully when a male and a female come together.
“Do you not think, it’s I who started? And… also ended.” She began to cry, now slowly. And then she calmed as we were sitting in front of unknown faces. It was not covert, so feelings concealed meanwhile.
“What? What did you start and… end? Why are you crying? Did I leave behind some reason to cry? If yes, what? “
“I want to cut it short. Now I’ve found someone who has given me the solace when I faced adversities, when I sought comfort under your arms and you honestly refused. Now, there’s nothing in between us. Is that clear?”
“So, you’re in a relationship, a bonding I mean to say? Is it? Good. Does he pamper you? Like what you’ve been searching all throughout? Does he love you? Did you…make a night? I mean…did you, do you mind if I ask you, commit sex?” I wondered later what I have been asking her, in impulsion, in anger probably, in love may be. Or desperation for no love?
“Yes, he’s very close to me. We share our intimate time with each other. And, why should I tell you of those deeper realities, I mean sex and all? We are very much in love with each other. He never lets me alone anywhere. He pampers me a lot. Keeps me under his arms when I am fallen, afraid… Yes, for your kind information I should tell you, we haven’t yet gone for the sex thing. It’s you who have always been lusty, your lust have distorted your vision of love. You couldn’t see when there was love waiting in front of you only for an embrace, which was expected. And, now…? “
“Ok. You need to say a little more to me. Carry on. I should listen to it.”
“And, now you return back again after…thirteen years proposing to me while you let your hands press hard my bum and what not. Tell me, what was that? No fool would believe that that’s some kind of love especially when meeting someone after so long. Even if it’s someone special or not. So, can I conclude with that?” She tries to be matter-of-fact in her speech.
“I’m not today a debater. I want to be a good listener. That was what I lacked since so long. Had I listened to what my inner consciousness talked, when you were with me, when we were small kids, I probably would not have to see this doom’s day. But, age makes a difference. Don’t you feel that, that was pretty early to have decided what’s love, what’s sex? How much were we…ten, eleven or how much…twelve, probably? Was that an age to decide whom you’d love? Yes, I’ve pressed your bum and as you say, what not? I tried to. Do you think that I go around with girls every other day and make nights…? Do you mean to say, I’m such a kind of lecher? I’m still doomed with the curse of the Madonna (slowly speaking, as if she would not listen to him, but she probably heard. Moreover, being a girl, she had higher perceptory senses). If you’d like to believe, I must say that I haven’t touched a single girl’s hand, let apart bum and all. It’s upon you to believe or not. I cannot force you to that. And, yes natural facts always exist. Don’t they exist in you? Being a male, further, you must also know that this is the only expressive medium of making love, which I am dearth of until now. Why? Because, probably I have always had felt you would be near me one day. Because I don’t-didn’t- express subconscious thoughts, but that always ran in torrents. And you’ve always been the primary reason of that torrential flow. Would you like to believe? You can probably refute them all, thinking the aforementioned to be a part of perhaps, a play, a drama, a feigning movement to gain something, as you say, what’s that…lust. Yes. Sex, I do not say, is a primary reason every time. But, it stands primary when you want to bring the ultimate intimacy with the one whom you have endeared so long, loved so long, craved so long and you want to give everything that’s yours to him/her. The last being the body. Body helps in uniting the soul strongly. And, the bond created thereafter is stranded forever. I love you, Angel. And that’s the beauty I’ve found out after realizing myself. This is the truth. This is the soul, where I want to reside. It’s for you to think. Does it sound like cinematic? I’m not reciting from films. If one believes that there’re still hearts present, even at this modern age, one should also know that, love will always be the triumphant thing.”
Naturally, silence on the other side after such a harangue.
"Will you pay the bill?” She asked as our cups got empty by then. That was the insignia of feeling someone your own. I cherished that and paid the bill.
We then walked almost with taciturnity, speaking once or twice about the sudden weather changes, people getting ill all over and confusion of heat and chill in the weather. We came out and went to a nearby park. Even there silence prevailed. Then I thought it’s my duty to start with something. I began to talk about our childhood pranks and mischief, those people whom I’ve left behind and remembering now after many years. We laughed at those pranks and some people who were worthy to be laughed at, we thought when we were kids. Now, we laughed relishing that in mind.
“I love you.” All of a sudden breaking all smiles and laughs, I exclaimed.
“Will you give me the love you’ve given me, when we were kids, when we were matured enough not to understand anything about love, when you came to me for the game, what you called, chor-police, whatsoever, when you always invited me to teach you tough spellings like “Eucalyptus” and names of other trees and birds, when you fed me with your own hands in your mother’s absence, when you always took my side during the games we played and even when someone else sets a tiff with me? Why did you do that, tell me? Why did you love me so much? Why?”
“Don’t you love me?” Came in retort. With that sobs must follow.
We embraced the tightest embrace ever made in this world. And kisses that followed like hungry beggars. I should not define what sort of kisses. They were of assorted types. It’s confidential. Huh!
I got a job with a renowned publisher as an editor immediately after my credentials are fulfilled. And, she works as a media consultant for a firm, a good one. I spend my time frequently writing and reading. I bunk office sometimes only to write and make love.
It was in the bomb blast her sire expired a few days following our nuptial business. She’s very close to him. She was completely broken. Needless to talk about extremists and all, we always keep on talking… What’s left is only to accept? Should we? Shouldn’t we? Leave that. I was always beside her-still I am. She could find in me now the comfort and pampered zone feel. I’m happy that I’m able to do that. We discussed and genuinely felt that our hunger would never finish, we’d remain hungry of love always.
The extremist and all other issues are dealt in individual. I and she might differ in these principles. But, when we’re together, we make love as if we’ve met that very day…it never ends, it always begins.