In all the list of loves I can recite, among the several that mortified my heart – and the few others that filled it with nothing less than sheer delight – one was different. That love which comes before all others. Before they lie, hurt to ruin you. That love when you hid nothing and gave it your all. The one where you loved till it hurts. Before you started to doubt the very existence of precious love – we all have one, the first. The very first who taught us how to love. For me, her name was Fortunate, but I consider myself to have been more fortunate to have met her.
Among the astounding features Mr. Russell possessed, the one which stood out tall like Everest was how full his cup of life was. He would admire the spoken language of English as if he admired a woman – till today he remains to be my most beloved teacher. On Mondays we had what he called “The Romeo epoch”, where I would quote the most interesting literary piece that I had read the week before. That day like all weeks following I stood up and quoted from the excellent texts I read.
There she was near the corner of my eye. With my eyes and the rest of my face tediously pretending not to see her attentive eyes perusing over my every word, comma and full stop. In fear of going to hell, I have to admit, I was rather quaint and strange at the time. I had friends. Oh I had many friends! Although they were all stuck on my undusted shelf in the pages of the books I read.
The next day in class Fortunate changed seats and came to sit with me. I had that feeling, the one where your lips would smile for no reason. I considered it above all other moments of feeling to be the single most delightful feeling ever felt by every inches of my body.
Her eyes held a layered story, although I found it thorny to read its tales. She carried a diary where she wrote all the things which flaunted her heart in the progress of the moving day. I once caught a glimpse of the contents she scribbled. I saw how she quoted me in every turn of a page. And, further wrote how she considered me to be the single most interesting being to ever have walked the face of the earth.
Knowing she liked me back, made me less tense and more relaxed when we spoke. She used to wait for me at the school gate in the mornings, even when I was late. She would wait and we’d both get punished. In those mornings she stood by the gate I remember it not being the sun, but her face that seemed to shine.
I feared the leap – the leap of telling her how I felt. It was not fear of rejection or disappointment which I feared but the one of change. My life was simple and safe. The change she would bring might weather and sink my ship of life. Was it not fair to read of how one can rip one’s heart? Excavating it from one’s chest to feed it to the wolves from its safe dwelling of its chest cavity? With yours being safe and intact in its protective cage. So now and then I would push her away. I regarded my solitude not as a heavy and miserable burden. But more precisely as a safe house where nothing could hurt me; a peep hole observation of the world outside.
But it soon became evident to me that I have not yet lived. I have read of the brutality of war but I have neither witnessed my best friend gasping for air – blood entwined with mud on his face – nor the smell of piles of men after a war. I have read of magnificent paintings and artists but I have never smelt or painted beauty through my hands. But most importantly, I have read of love – undying love. The sonnets of Shakespeare, and the poems of Landon, however, I have never felt what it was like to wake up next to a dream and feel truly happy. I may get hurt: my heart to bleed but for her it was a chance I would seize.
With her, I felt the smoothness of a kiss and the tender softness of a hug. It was beyond the narrative excellence of any book or the beauty of any poetic depiction. While the teacher taught, I only listened absentmindedly. Spending continued hours simply admiring her hair, eyes and those small ears she had. I was interrupted by Mr. Russell who asked me to recite the most interesting thing I read in the past week.
“I have read the best book ever written by the ten fingers of men,” I told them. “I read the carvings of her lips. No, not lines that connect the stars but lips; I assure you, they are lips. I read all corners of a smile, and each one that I read every hair I counted made me be.” She stood up and walked up to me like a sexy jaguar in the jungle to kiss while all my peers were starring.
I believe this was when I found it. Dear reader, there are 206 bones in the human body, all perfectly aligned, with one joining to the other in perfect harmony. That day I discovered my last bone, my last romantic bone.
Waves of rumor started to perpetuate through the school like a violent wind swaying long and slender grass in the field. That day when I accompanied her home she said,
“I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything” I responded still drowned by her kiss.
“I need you to promise me that you will not fall in love with me” This was a strange thing to ask but I could not show my vulnerability thus agreeing to this misunderstood statement. Although I knew how late it was, I had already fallen deep and was now just drowning in her.
The days that were to follow, my smile hid my teeth and the sadness of my mind. Something caught my eye while we were filling forms. Fortunate stared hard at the blank space adjacent to illnesses with her pen almost touching to write. After seeing how interested I was she wrote none and passed. For years we loved like the world was fleeting and temporary.
Each time she said goodbye, my eyes grew teary. And I’d call god a liar for making her leave. You can hide some things but even hidden secrets find their way through the desert. Pieces of me died when I found out she was dying. That devilish cancer, “cancering” away her blood! Now it all became clear what she hid it from me, why she said I should not fall in love with her.
I remember how in the months that followed our smiles were replaced with dismay. I felt varied emotions in my young heart; yet the feeling – the thought that my first love was dying crushed my intangible soul.
Her mother called my house to tell me of her deteriorating illness; that they had to take her to the hospital. I reached the room she was admitted in. I was still sweating from scurrying up the stairs. I found her lying there with pale skin and lips. Her hair was now gone and hands were almost cold when I touched. She tried to smile and speak for my sake although I could barely make out what she said through the roughness of her poor mouth.
“What did you do to her?” I shouted at the doctor who was present. Interrogating him on the opposite wall – with my hands heavy on his white coat, I yelled, “Fix her!” Then I felt her cold hands wrapping around me. Her eyes were still joyful when I turned. We sat there on the floor, her in my arms till the nurses dragged me to leave when visiting hours had passed.
In the days which followed, the hospital became my school. VISITATION HOURS FROM 12 TILL 2, the notice would say. From 8 till 12 I’d sit by the opposite street to gaze high upon her window. We learned sign language so that our hands could communicate, when rules split us apart. I thought about her so our hearts could beat in unison, when space hid her from my eyes. We would sit and talk about never-ending aspirations: dreams and things. Her condition deteriorated with each day, dying with each breath that she bitterly inhaled. We prayed to the man in the sky each day and each passing night, but he was deaf to our prayers and dumb in response. With her rising soul, my faith and belief were leaving. The nurses came to understand that the words “visiting hours” did not apply to me. They meant very little to me.
Mr. Russell also understood and did his best to cover in my absence. “I had a dream last night,” she said during my visitation. “I dreamt you standing here, we smiled and kissed,” she smiled, I kissed her.
“Was I cool like the terminator in your dream?” I asked her, hoping she’d smile.
“No, you were you… the greatest man I’d ever known.” She paused to play idly with my hands. “He has a plan; I know you don’t believe it… but in my dream I saw it.” She then held my face with her soft cold hands.
“Don’t give up on him”. With
that she had breathed her last. Her eyes still solidified to mine. I held onto her for hours to come till her blood was cold and no more tears I had to cry. I cursed the one who lives in the sky. And I never wasted another prayer for him to hear ‘till this day.
But today I’m in church no one understands why, starring at the caricature of the man on the cross; my eyes still teary from long ago in my fledging youth. With her words still ringing in my mind, “Don’t give up on him.” So perhaps I shouldn’t.
Chapter 6
Romeo and
Juliet