A love ahead of time - II - Plizz to bear with me! :P

So about an year and a half back i had written a short "love" story. (Read it HERE) Yeah, I know the probability of me writing a love story is same as the probability of RJD and SP coming out in support of Women's bill but I wanted to write the story from Narayan's perspective (many people also suggested I do) and I had written it but not published it. Found the document lying deep in the recesses of my C: drive so thought it was time to subject you to another one of my hopeless love stories! :P
So here goes! A love ahead of time - Part II! :P

Please do let me know what you think of it. Honestly! So if you don't like it please say so.

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Narayan took his spectacles off to wipe them, cursing Pittsburgh’s weather under his breath, quickening his pace. Damn the frost which frosted his spectacles blurring his vision. Damn the cold which found its way to each and every crevice and bone in his body making him shiver. Narayan was walking with Shyam from the university to his quarters inside the campus. Fall had just gotten over and winter was setting in. The landscape was beautiful and all the trees had shed their leaves leaving a lovely carpet of red yellow and orange leaves on the ground. The students enjoyed this season. Every bench on campus was occupied with couples holding hands, whispering and giggling with the soft glow of love evident on their faces.

“Bloody hell. Defiling every inch of the campus by sitting and doing all kinds of nonsense on the benches. Love it seems. Bah!!” Shyam growled. “There should be a rule against this”.

“They are just students Shyam. This is the age to fall in love. You wouldn’t understand. You have obviously never been in love” said Narayan with a soft smile

“hah!! Like you have a lot of experience Narayan. You aren’t even married”

Narayan smiled. If only Shyam knew. Married with a wife and 2 kids for 26 years Shyam had seen less love that Narayan had in one year with Lakshmi!! That one wonderful year of his life

Lakshmi. Involuntarily he smiled at her memory.

The first time he saw her she was singing some Bhajan for the Golu at their house. He hated these customs. The Golu, the ladies visiting their house for Golu, all that money which amma and appa spent to do the various archanai’s at all the temples in trichy, the money they spent on feeding all the greedy kurukkals who came to do the “pithru kaaryam”. Narayan was sure Thatha would have been infinitely happy if appa had used all that money to feed the poor people in Trichy than spend it on these kurukkals for his devasam. It was ironical. The more he questioned these customs the more number of archanais amma did asking god to give her son “nalla buddhi” or good sense. Narayan was 22 years old. Angry, confused and agnostic he spent most of the time in the public library reading books on theology, sociology, anything he could lay his hands on and trying to find answers to his never ending questions and when at home he spent his time reading his thatha’s books. Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Pablo Neruda. He found solace in their writings.

He had a bachelors degree in Mathematics and with Appa’s influence he could have gotten a respectable job as a professor in Holy Cross trichy. But the rebel that he was, he had chosen to sit at home and read, discover himself and then go on to get settled in life. How he wished he had taken up that job. How he wished he had been well settled when he met Lakshmi. If only… if only..

He would never forget that day. The first time he touched her. It was pouring. As usual he had had a fight with appa and had picked up his umbrella and left home in a huff to walk to the library to spend some quality time reading. He was walking on the pavement when he suddenly saw someone walking right in the middle of the road and a car’s headlights flashing close behind. He realized that if he didn’t intervene the person would be hit. He reached out to the person’s arm and pulled her to safety even as the car whizzed by and it was Lakshmi. Those big beautiful kohl rimmed eyes staring at her with a gamut of emotions ranging from fear to apprehension to relief to confusion playing in them.

Are you crazy?” he shouted at her as soon as he found his voice

She turned around and started blubbering “Th…Thanks. I..I..didnt hear the car. It was raining and…”.

He had offered her his umbrella, still holding her arm and she had pushed it away determinedly preferring to go by bus and he had offered to wait with her.
In the past 30 years he had replayed that scene in his mind a 100 times, playing the hopeless what if game

What if he had just said “ok” and left her. She would never have come into his life then. He would have carried on with life, married someone his parents had chosen for him and been one of those innumerable human beings on earth untouched by the power of love.

But it was not to be. He had chosen to wait with her at the bus stand. Why? That was a question he couldn’t answer. Maybe he was bored, maybe it was hormones, maybe he had a foreboding that they were meant to fall in love or maybe he just wanted someone to talk to.

That day at the bus stop it was appa who had come and disturbed the perfect moment that he had shared with her. It was amazing how appa had spoilt some of the things he valued the most in life. That perfect moment with Lakshmi, his future,his life with Lakshmi…

“Narayan” shyam’s voice pierced his reverie. “Where are you going? We have reached our apartment”

Narayan entered his apartment glad to be alone with his thoughts and reveled in the warmth which it provided. How he missed the warm Trichy weather. He removed the layers of clothes on top of him, the gloves, the cap, his shoes and changed into a cotton shirt and veshti – his only connection with Trichy. He switched on the coffee maker and grimaced at the black color liquid it spewed forth. Black decaf, these Americans called it. What was coffee without a generous dose of fresh milk, prepared with fresh decoction, two spoons of sugar and shaken till the froth formed? He settled down with the coffee and his thoughts switched back to Lakshmi
That one wonderful year of his life.

When had he fallen in love with her? He couldn’t really say. Maybe it was that first sarcastic reply of hers. He was a very judgmental person and had thought of her as just another air head who went to college just so that she could put “B.Sc graduate” on her “marriage” resume. He was wrong. She was intelligent, innocent and willing to learn which was an endearing combination. He remembered how he would wait for her to come to the bus stand after college and would keep peeping out of the window in the library to see if she had come. Those endless conversations which he had with her, those long walks home, the smell of jasmine in her hair, and mysore sandal soap on her self, the tinkle of her anklets and bangles, the sound of her deep laughter, her intelligence, her inquisitiveness, the expression of wonder on her face when she spoke of the authors whose books he loaned her…. These were some images and sounds which had become ingrained in his memory. She was everything that he ever wanted in a woman. He always thought she was his and they were meant to be.

That day when she had told him that they had started groom hunting for her, THAT was the first day when fear had crept into him that she might not be his and he would have to do something if he didn’t want to lose her. He had proposed marriage and the happy tears in her eyes had been answer enough.

The same day he had broken the news at home. Amma had started crying and Appa with a melancholy expression on his face had asked him a question which had sealed Narayan’s fate because he didn’t have an answer. “If you were the father of a daughter would you assent to give her hand in marriage to a person like yourself who doesn’t earn and doesn’t seem to make any efforts at doing so?”

He had just assumed that Appa and Amma would agree because of the friendship between them and Lakshmi’s parents. He had been terribly mistaken. Appa hadn’t even allowed him to explain things to Lakshmi. He guessed that things at Lakshmi’s end were even worse because no communication came from that side too. He had sent her a letter explaining how things were and why they couldn’t get married because of society’s silly constraints. He never got a reply. She must have had a very low opinion of him.

Within a week, news of her marriage came. He had wanted to attend but Appa wouldn’t hear of it. To prevent him from doing anything brash they had gone to Coimbatore for a week to Perima’s place. By the time he came back the one person in the entire city who he cared for no longer existed. He had heard she was in Madras now married to a successful bank officer. She never came to Trichy after that and 2 years later appa had gotten a transfer to Madurai and they had moved. He finished his Post graduation in Coimbatore, finished his MS and Phd and had moved to Pittsburgh – unable to forget her. He had chosen to remain a bachelor. He didn’t think he was capable of loving anyone as much as he had loved Lakshmi. Amma had tried everything to convince him but he was determined. If it wasn’t Lakshmi it wasn’t anyone.

He drained his mug off the last few drops of the bitter liquid and stood for a long time at the window watching the falling leaves and the beautiful campus and thinking about Lakshmi and his fate.

Fate, thought Narayan was a cruel thing. It makes you meet and fall in love with a person who in ur heart of hearts u know can never be yours and yet in a strange inexplicable rather stupid way instead of wishing that u had never met them, you feel glad that they were a part of your life.

It had been 20 years since he had moved to Pittsburgh and yet he hadn’t gotten used to the country but he hadn’t wanted to go back to India. He had cherished the anonymity and freedom which this country had given him. That combined with the fact that Pittsburgh wasn’t swarming with “well wishers” wanting to get him married.
But now at the age of 52 he doubted if anyone would try to get him married.

It was time to go home. Time to go back to Trichy. Time again to spend the rest of his life as a bachelor, sitting at the public library and trying to answer elusive questions.

Life, had come a full circle.

A love ahead of time!!

a "romantic" short story i wrote for a contest in office.
a lame albeit sincere attempt at "ROMANCE" :D:D
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Lakshmi got up and one hand of hers mechanically reached out and turned off the alarm lest it rang and disturbed Gopal who was sleeping peacefully. Even without looking, even before it rang she knew what time it was. 5 o clock. Every night when she set the alarm Gopal would joke saying “your body’s alarm is more reliable than Orpat. Why waste time setting an alarm?”

She got out of bed, brushed her teeth and went about her ablutions in a mechanical manner. Getting the milk, cutting open the packet, emptying it into a vessel, adding a little water to drain the packet of its last drops of milk, setting the vessel to boil, boiling the water to make the coffee decoction. After making herself a cup of hot frothy filter coffee, she retreated to the swing in the balcony to watch the break of dawn as the dark blue of the night gave way to the cerulean sky of the dawn and a gentle breeze tickled her senses. Somehow the dark blue of the sky always made her think of him. His eyes. Those deep dark azure eyes of his eyes which spoke volumes though he was a man of very few words.

Lakshmi closed her eyes and it all came back to her like it had happened yesterday. She was 18 and it was the Navratri season. Lakshmi and her sister Vijaya had gone to Sarasu maami’s house for golu. She was the best singer in the neighbourhood. “MS kurral. Truly gifted you are Lakshmi” Ranga mama, Sarasu maami’s husband would say with a nod of his head. That day she sat down to render a Bhajan in the kapi raagam. She always closed her eyes while singing. Her concentration wouldn’t divert that away. That day as soon as she finished singing and was met with thunderous applause, she opened her eyes and he stood before her and for the first time her innocent eyes met his cynical ones. There he was standing with a smirk on his face with a book in his hand and his hands crossed across his chest while everyone else in the room used their hands to applaud her song.

“Nara, did u hear that?” Sarasu maami asked him. “How well she sings doesn’t she.”
He smirked some more and made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a cough and retreated into his room

Oh!! How she hated him.

Narayan was a black sheep of their Agraharam. “Iconoclast. Too much of education and spending time in the public library has made him like this. Disgrace to Sarasu and Ranga, such nice god fearing people” appa would hiss when he spoke of him. “Ayyo naastheekama (atheist)?? Shiva Shiva” her mother would chant. He had radical ideas and “is way ahead of his times” Sethu anna would say. None of this made any sense to Lakshmi. All she knew was that she hated him because he refuted religious customs, thought too much of himself and was a pompous ass who loved to smirk at her.

And then the rains came. She would never forget that day. The first time he touched her. It was pouring cats and dogs and she had missed her last bus home from college and as luck would have it, she had forgotten her umbrella too and was walking towards the shade of the bus stand to wait there till the rains abated. It was pouring so hard it was impossible to see anything in front of her or to see the road or make out if she was walking on the pavement or on the road. Suddenly she felt a hand on her arm and someone pulled her to safety as a car whizzed past her. “Are you crazy?” she heard a voice. She turned around and found herself staring into those eyes again. “Th…Thanks. I..I..didnt hear the car. It was raining and…”. “Never mind” he hushed her. “Here take my umbrella and I will walk you home”. He was still holding her arm. She pulled it away determinedly and said “No, Thanks. I will wait at the bus stand and take the next bus home”. There. There it was. That irritating smirk again. “Ok. I will wait with you” he said. She was extremely glad he said that but said “Suit yourself. It isn’t my bus stand for me to prevent you from waiting there”.

“So? College eh?” he said after an uncomfortable silence of 10 minutes

“No, I enjoy walking in the rains at 6 in the evening, getting drenched and getting hit by cars frequently” she said sarcastically even as her heart beat like 100 drummers were working overtime. She moved away afraid that he might hear it

He smirked again and she wanted to scream.

“ok. I am sorry I spoilt your hobby of getting hit by cars by saving you. Won’t happen again” he said

She smiled and looked up at him and time froze. She didn’t remember how long they kept looking at each other. He later told her that, that was when he had fallen in love with her. A car sped by and splashed water on them and screeched to a halt. “Nara, Lakshmi what are you doing here? Get in the car” Ranga mama’s voice came through the sheets of rain. Ranga mama dropped her home and that night she for the first time she thought kindly of him.

The bus stand became their constant meeting place. Maybe it was co-incidence, maybe it was providence or maybe it was how Narayan planned things but everyday when she stood in the bus stand he would leave the public library opposite the bus stand and walk up to her. They spoke about everything under the sun. Slowly she started looking forward to their daily meetings. She realized that contrary to what appa said he wasn’t an iconoclast but was just agnostic and liked to question things and just had un conventional ideas on many things, things about which she had been taught to think in a particular conventional way . He was like no one else she had met. He was eloquent, extremely well read, kind, sensitive, had an amazing sense of humor and she enjoyed talking to him. What she felt for him she had never felt for anyone. He completely changed the way she looked at life and the way she thought. He gave her life a totally new perspective. The first books she ever read were the ones which he loaned her, books which when she saw in the market reminded her of him. She read and re read those books and marveled at how beautifully they had been written. She was only existing till she met him. After he came into her life she started living.

After an year when she had finished her B.sc they started “maapilai hunting” at home for Lakshmi and she realized that she didn’t want to be with anyone else except Narayan. That evening when they met at the bus stand, their last time ever, she told him they were looking out for a groom. She still remembered how he reacted. They were sitting side by side and when she told her he gave her one long serious look, those azure eyes boring into her and said “Marry me”. That was that. They decided to tell their parents

That evening she confronted amma and appa and told them she loved Narayan. Appa blew his top.

“what??? That iconoclast? See savithri. Look at what your daughter has done. I told u not to educate her. You educate women and this is what they do. They think if they can read the paper, they can rule the world. Keep them at home and marry them off at 18. Look at what she has done. I cant show my face anywhere now”

“Appa, please. He is really nice. And you know Ranga mama and sarasu maami so well” she pleaded

“so?? Do u have any idea what he does for a living. How he will take care of you?”

She was stumped. She had known him for an year and not once had she asked him what he did for a living

“See. You don’t have an answer. You want to marry a vagabond, who doesn’t believe in God, who doesn’t have a job. Shiva shiva. We have found a nice boy for you from Kumbakonam called Gopal. He works for a reputed bank in Madras…”

And that was the end of it. She shouted, she screamed, she pleaded, she threatened to kill herself but Appa wouldn’t budge. She never saw Narayan again. He tried writing to her and the letter was intercepted by Appa and he tore it without reading. She wasn’t allowed to go out of the house. She hoped Ranga mama and Sarasu maami would come and talk but nothing happened. Gopal’s parents came approved and appraised her, a date was fixed and she was married
That was 30 years back. A lone tear escaped her eye and fell into her cup of coffee, gone cold now. Gopal was a good man. He was a decent husband, a good father, a very good son, brother and son in law. She had no complaints. Regrets? Yes. She had those. Her 26 year old daughter had visited last month from the US with her American husband with whom she had “lived in” for an year before deciding to get married. Gopal and Lakshmi hadn’t said anything or rather weren’t able to say anything. In their heart of hearts they were glad she had married someone of the opposite gender. They had a Brahmin style wedding and an American style wedding. When she looked at Priya, her daughter, she wished she had been born at a different time. At a time when falling in love wasn’t taboo, when a job in a reputed bank wasn’t the only thing parents looked at. If only, if only…..

She never heard from Narayan after that. After marriage she had moved to Madras and her parents made sure she never visited Trichy, making it a point to visit her when she felt home sick. Conversation was always careful never steering towards Ranga mama’s family. Once she had discreetly asked amma and she had promptly gone and told appa. That was the end of it. Narayan was like a chapter of her life which had existed only in her imagination. No record of him existed anywhere. She didn’t even have a photograph, a letter. Nothing. Just memories of a man who had taught her to think and now existed only in her thoughts.

“lakshmi” gopal’s voice echoed. She quickly wiped her tears away and responded to his call.

The sky was orange now, the sun high up, the beautiful dark azure shade completely gone.