After reading this, you're going to ask me one question. My answer to that is "no".
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I always thought I was a strong person. Not in the physical sense of the word; but from the perspective of heart. Although an emotional person, I never quite understood what actually caused a boy to fall in love with a girl. Yes. True. I think I never really fell in love. Apart from the mild crushes and the childish infatuations, I never really felt the pangs of love for any girl. I always believed I was impervious to love. My conservative Gujarati upbringing, along with my sensitivity towards my parents' feelings and expectations, never really allowed me to water the plant of feelings for girls who did not belong to the Gujarati-Brahmin bracket. And having stayed outside Gujarat for most of my youthful years, I didn't quite meet those girls, with whom, I could've permitted myself to indulge. I almost prided myself on the fact that I can't fall for a girl. That was until recently, when she, out of nowhere, came into my life.
She works for a client company at Bangalore. We started chatting over some work. Some high-priority work forced us to call each other once in a while. She came across as a friendly girl - a Tamilian, basically from Calicut, brought up in Mumbai. It couldn't have been a more cosmopolitan upbringing. It was a delight to hear a Tamilian dishing out Mumbai's colloquialisms of "haan kya" and "nahi re". Before we knew it, we were constantly chatting to each other. We both would wait impatiently for our chat windows to produce that 'click' sound and then blink, signaling a message for us to open and read, so we could reply... and then wait... for the next reply...and so on... it went on... tirelessly. And before we knew it, we felt depressed and suffocated if no such sound came or if the screen didn't blink for some time. Much before we knew it, we knew a lot about each other. Much before we knew it, we were getting addicted. Within a week of our first chat, she spilt the beans by saying she was getting addicted to me.
I had not as yet thought about this. I was still under the impression that we were nothing but good friends. Years and years of self-imposed restrictions never really allowed me to look at the whole thing beyond the purview of friendship. And yet, I found I was being drawn to her; drawn, like I had never been to any girl before. Knowing her in the week that went by had been the most exhilarating and unexpectedly pleasant experience of my life. We had started talking to each other at night. But, it was not just talking. It was each other's presence at the other end of the phone that mattered. We both just wanted to be on phone, with the surety that we're both speaking a lot; and yet, nothing from the mouth. Her very presence on the phone was reassuring enough; reason enough for me not to hang up. It was as if, hanging up of the phone was suddenly the most difficult thing to do in the world; as if the one to hang up first would end up at the gallows. And still, I was hopelessly preventing myself from believing that I'd fallen for a girl who was a brahmin, but not a Gujarati. I was still trying to give myself an assurance that there was an escape; there was still a way to avoid all the hassles I was going to plunge myself into. And yet, there was a desire to be wanted, to be loved by someone other than your parents and family, by someone really unknown, for whom you could be the world.
During the course of our last late-night conversation, I failed to tell her unequivocally that I had fallen for her. May be I hadn't decided. May be I wasn't sure of its outcome. May be I was overcautious. May be I wasn't ready for a commitment just yet. But I made her say the same thing scores of times. And she did repeat it, without expectations. Each of her statement tingled my skin to discomfort, gave me a kick that could match the addictive trance of cocaine. And yet, I didn't realize how selfish I was in making her profess the affirmation repeatedly. With each statement, I was plunging her into a deep valley, from which I myself would not be able to rescue her. I then told her a whole lot of things about my tastes, talents and female friends. She then realized she was different; different from the kind of girl I was looking for. She realized I would reject her on seeing her; if that day ever came. She developed a fallacy that I was a class apart and deserved a much better girl than her. So, she decided to break it all on her own. She gracefully accepted the fact that it was not necessary for me to fall for her just because she had fallen for me.
She came to my life like a whirlwind. In a matter of a week, she made me realize I was not impervious to love, and these feelings could enter my fortress irrespective of caste, religion and other barriers I had built for myself. She pulverized the castle of my pride to dust with her gentle voice and friendly demeanor. She taught me that the character of a person is not found when the relationships are made, but when broken. It is the grace with which she accepted our differences and loss of the first love of her life that made her a much better person than I was. My being a much more talented person made her feel she was a raw deal for me. How do I tell her that finding your love is not about finding the best person in the world? It is about finding the best fit.
The ways of the world sometimes puzzle me. Everyone keeps scouting for talented people for company. And yet, one's talent can hardly be of any use to others except for public display of the pride of such a possession. It is only one's 'goodness' that could be of any use to others when it matters most. We've scores of yardsticks to measure the success of a person. But the strength of the person lies in how gracefully he accepts the failures. And we've failed to produce yardsticks for that. The discrepancy in the talent between us became the reason for our breakup. And yet, I doubt if my talent makes me any better a person than her. Does my talent really make me good enough to make her undeserving of me?
And yet, I'm jealous of her. She had the courage to accept it all and get to the depth of love without bothering about the consequences. She was debonair enough to go right under the waterfall of love. I stood at the shore and sprinkled my feet with water. I was the loser on both counts. I lost my pride and am bereft of her love as well.
