A Short Love Story

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.