Part 4
Dear Diary
Not always we are taught how to understand our feelings...sometimes even life fails to teach us how to tackle them. But the strongest teacher is unrequited love... it makes u selfless... it makes u understand how you can love without expecting return... it helps you understand how important it is to protect yourself from the urging emotion to demonstrate your love to the special person without thinking of consequences... in short unrequited love tames the wildest part of you... with love...
Yeah my love for him taught me how wrong it would be to express myself to a guy with broken heart who was more in need of a friend. Humans are fragile when they lose someone and so was he... she had been in his life since 2-3 years. Looking back, I would say teenage love gone bad... and maybe now as an adult I would even refuse to acknowledge it as love... but truth is love has many forms and has no age... how much ever we deny to pacify ourselves. He was indeed broken but that didn't mean he wasn't fixable. After all there was a girl holding her heart hiding her feelings from her eyes there for him at every step. The 1 year old friend was now not just a chat buddy or someone who taught him before exams... but someone who had held him in one piece.
I remember how every night before sleeping I made sure he had a good day and that he was in a normal mood . And yet I managed to spare a few moments to myself... when I could separate the friend and lover and understand my own feelings. I kept denying and accepting and then denying it more strongly. Love or not ... I cared deeply about him and the slightest change in tone of his voice could be detected by me..It felt like a responsibility to keep him fixed... to keep him happy... but like I said there comes a point when u invest so much that you forget that your soul is also aching... aching due to absence of love... well it took me a real long 1 year to realize how deep I had gone.
Everyone in the college knew that we were the best of friends... and yet this label was never brought up by him or me ( well at least not in front of him). He would just airily say.. yeah she is a good friend... well some where that made me happy and yet sad. It didn't take me long to realize that the closer we got in person ... the further we got in public... in the sense that we were never found together alone... maybe he made sure.. and so did I. I didn't want my hopes up... after knowing about his love from scratch to to end... I didn't want to be just another girl he dated. I wanted to be special and being a "good friend" seemed sufficient from me rather than being a girlfriend. I never got those vibes from him and yet he he behaved different in front of our friends and different on phone. The truth was I had discovered the real him and now I coud see how different he was in real..maybe that is just a guy thing...maybe they dnt like expressing and yet there are girls who have guy best friends writing poems for them posting pictures with them claiming their friendship! But maybe our friendship didn't need to be claimed.
And then came another crack. I got a call late at 3 a.m. By now I knew who would call at this hour
" Hello arnav...what happened?"
and an excited voice came from the other end
" Khushi!!!... she said yes!"
"she? ... who?? "
" Sarika!"
"Sarika? You proposed her?.. and you didn't even tell me"
He could sense the anger in my voice
" well Ummm.. I didn't get time!.."
" Yeah we were studying all day yesterday together... and today I was completing the file of yours and you kept reminding me how important it is... and yet you forgot this"
And then he sounded annoyed
" Come on! you are the first person I told isn't that enough? don't behave this way"
and then I swallowed my words... remember how his tone of voice could shut me... after all his feelings mattered not mine
I talked for next few minutes completely normally.
To this day I remember sitting up till morning waiting fr my heart to calm down... it was a sickening feeling and yet I couldn't shed tears... maybe I was waiting for this... so I could back out..I was falling too hard ...after all... but yeah the crack in my heart was acknowledged by me...
It was time to move a bit away from him.. this was getting too hard...
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An irritating alarm tune woke me up.. I tried to reach for the phone but instead knocked my diary off the bed.. I had slept off writing... I felt light.. a little light maybe... venting out my feeling was working finally maybe...until...the phone alarm gave changed to a different tune. I knew who would call...
"Hello Ms Gupta.. I wanted to ask about the meeting today. Will you come to our office at 10 instead of 11 for the presentation?"
The husky voice made the little weight that had lifted come right back...
I managed to say okay and cut the phone
He called again
" Khushi if only we could talk?"
"Ms. Gupta----"
I expected an irritated reply...but he said very calmly...maybe too calmly
" I am not talking to my colleague .. I am talking to an old friend...so I can call her khushi!"
I held my breath...I remembered the cracks... I remembered ..the pain... the burden I had been carrying... The friendship that had brought everything but love...
"Khushi"
he again said but in a lower voice as if he was about to say something I had not heard before...
" I know we ended on a bad note... and I did not help the matters... I was as stubborn.. but can we meet after office..."
I was still searching for words..
his tone had a bit of desperation which was smartly covered by his heavy husky casual voice
"Khushi?..."
" Okay.. CCD at 5 near my office.., and if that does not works I cant help it"
I said in a much attempted cold voice... but who was I kidding... his tone still affected me.
He said very eagerly " Yes yes! that is great"
and that made me feel satisfied...
and as I cut the phone I realized the Khushi who was best at pleasing others was returning especial the Khushi who would go to any lengths for her best friend... even to the point of harming herself just so that his tone of voice remained normal.
I sat frozen waiting for the feeling to sink in.
The 5 years of resistance was breaking and I looked at how scared I was in the mirror.. scared of coming face to face with the real broken me who could hold on to even a fragment of moment spent with him to keep herself alive...
I did not want to pity myself and yet the girl who had walked off from a friend so dear... was again weak ...
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Hope this is a long enough part to compensate... As I said this is one story I want to write... I really would like to request you all to comment... and like..
Please do!
Thank you
Cheers
Griffy
Part 5
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