Photo Credit - Asha Dimri
It was Valentine’s day, a day for which Ronit waited for quite
long. He decided he would express his love to Ria. Somewhere deep down he knew
she loved her too, though he couldn’t make out from when or from where. First
moment he felt her love was when he was blamed for a political scam in college
and everyone doubted him except Ria. Though he later proved he wasn’t the
culprit Ria already trusted him and trust needed no proof.
Why Ronit called her to meet in the garden? Ria wondered
as she decided on what to wear for the special day. She was almost sure he
would propose her. When she lost her mother two years back she lamented for too
long and slowly everyone close to her drifted away. They were tired of her
whining, but not Ronit. He stood by her. At times his words provided her the
courage to move on and at times his silence was her support.
The weather was wonderful when they met in the garden.
The sweet fragrance of the flower bed, the calm breeze, love birds loitering
around holding hands added to the charm of the weather. Ronit wanted to say a
thousand things – he wanted to tell her how much he loved her, her smile meant
the world to him, every moment of separation was a suffering for him. But words
failed him.
“You wanted to say something?” Ria asked when it was time
to depart.
“Just wanted to wish you Happy Valentine’s day. You will
be my friend forever. Right?”
“Of course. I never thought you could doubt that.” She
couldn’t make it more than a whisper.
They walked out of the garden, from the romantic
atmosphere to the busy street. It was loud and noisy but Ria was too lost to
hear it, the noise inside her was more disturbing. How could she be wrong in
understanding him? Were her friends’
right when they said he had a thing for Prerna? How could she accept that?
Suddenly a strong grasp pulled her out of her reverie.
“What the hell you were thinking about?” she found Ronit
shouting at her.
“What?” she responded as she looked around. She found the
bus conductor shouting obscenities at her.
“How can you be so
careless? How can you miss seeing such a huge bus, what were you thinking
about?”
She was shocked as she had never heard Ronit shouting at
her. She didn’t respond.
“Tell me what you were thinking about.” He continued
shouting “if something happened to you how would I…..” it took a huge effort
but he stopped midway and broke his eye lock.
“I…what…Ronit?”
“I…How would I live without you?”
There was a long silent moment before he hugged her. She
was so shocked that she couldn’t utter a word when she hugged him back. Out of
a hundred of thousand of millions of moments only a few survive the storm of
time, and at that very moment she knew this was one of those moments; the corner
of the busy street, between loud horns and sandy surrounding where love
expressed itself. It wasn’t the romantic garden, the soft music that unfolded
their feelings. It weren’t the three words “I love you” that expressed what
they felt, it were a few angry words. For love is not about day or place or
words, it’s about feelings.
There are times when the words “I love you” are fake. There
are times when unspoken feelings are true. But unfortunately more than often
words wins over true feelings because the facade of words is too attractive to ignore.
I hope you never fall for that facade of words and recognize
feelings over words but more importantly I wish you have that one person in
your life who can listen to your silence as well.
