"I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality."
-The Hunchback of Notre Dame
When you touch someone with your fingers and feel the surface of their skin, the softness of it, what is the first thing you feel?
Presence.
You feel them. They're there. Right beside you. You move your fingers over their arm and feel the texture and the proof of their presence. She's here. Right here. She's real. She's not a dream to be snatched away.
People think physicality can describe lust and need and all that, that is also, natural for a partner to feel for another. Because if there's no madness in love, it is not love. If you don't want her more than you've ever wanted anything in your life, your love is not a complete, full, consuming love.
But Manik, who has always been a man of actions and less words, he doesn't simply touch her because he wants to be physically near her. He touches her to feel her presence. When I think of him, I think of a lonely lonely boy. Alone. Deprived. And depravity has the stench of rotten dreams to it. It comes to haunt you at nights which appear the coldest, and inspires you in fright, the kind that restricts your soul.
To have never felt warmth and love as a child, and to have been deprived of the presence of it, Manik touches to feel, to know, to feel her presence, to know he's not alone. She's there. he touches to feel her warmth, he touches to know that even after every despicable act, she's here, she's his, she won't leave. She adores that monster as much as she adores the child inside that never exactly grew up. When he touches her, he expresses his gratitude. He thanks her, for the love, for the better life, for peace.
But most importantly, and the reason he wants to is,
Because she calms him.
Manik loves her, because she calms him.
It's one simple word. Calmness. And that is what forms the strongest bond between the two.
Calmness.
Manik has built rage and fire, anger, frustration inside him all his life. He always vent it out by bullying people, taking it out on others. There was noway to channel out everything that kept accumulating inside him everyday. Every single moment where his mother mocked their relationship, every single moment the absence of his father cut through him, so he formed a shield and breathed through his fury and frustration, he piled it up.
Nobody could get through Manik's anger.
But she did.
And he let her, because she calms him.
When she's near, his deprived soul blooms like flowers do in spring.
She gives him warmth. She gives him love. she gives him his reason to be. and she calms him.
When she's near, the anger vanishes, the disappointments dissolve, the bleakness of his past blurs. The lava inside him cools down. She makes it melt. She calms him.
When he's confused and his rage peaks, she touches him, she touches him with her hands and her words. And he listens. And he's coherent. And he breathes.
Because she calms him.
When he's brimming full of agony and temper, when none of his friends even dare go near her, she follows him, she barges inside.
She tells him, listen to me Manik.
And he does.
He sulks and sinks in a chair and listens.
Because he knows she calms him.
And then all of the raging black fury dissolves, he smiles, his countenance transforms into the beauty that sings peace and light.
Because she calms him.
Because she understands him.
Because she'd never give up.
And he loves her.
Because she, with her smiles and words and touch, has in her, the power to make him listen.
To teach to him so much more.
To give him so much more.
And he loves her.
Because she calms him.
Because calmness is so steady and he hasn't felt it all his life.
He wants to change for her. She brings out the baby in him, the boy who'd tickle and who'll laugh and who'll dance with sheer joy, who'll giggle and who'll smile, and who'll change and who'll understand even when he needs the physical contact, he'll pull back and stand up and tell her, thankyou. Thankyou for not giving up on me. He accepts, anything she gives, and he gives back, not kissing her, giving her what she wants, without a second thought.
Because, she has in her, the ability to calm him.
And because he loves her, more than he's ever ever loved anybody.
He has in him, the capability, to give her, the world only if she wants it.
Because, he has in him, the love, nobody else does.
And because when she smiles, every single chord of his body hums with peace.
He wants to make her smile. He wants to see her smile. And he'd kill for each and every of her smile.
He'll listen. He'll understand. He'll love, he'll give. He'll alter, he'll accept.
And he will.
Because, she's worth doing all of that for.
She's worth loving.
She's worth calming for.
She's worth giving anything and everything a chance.
And that's because...
She makes him smile.
And sometimes, sometimes, what she inspires in him, is so uncontainable, so unstoppable like an avalanche, he's fearful and afraid if converting it into words will destroy him, because he cannot, he cannot, want her and need her more than he already does.
But with every passing day he realizes, he does. All of it. More and more.
There's more her in his veins than there's blood.
There's more her in his lungs, than there is air.
There's more her in his existence than there's his ownself.
And there's more peace in soul now, than the anger that had once resided.
And that's because, she calms him.
Simple as that.
"From the moment I met you, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you. And now that I'm with you again...I'm in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. The thought of not being with you - I can't breathe. I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating... hoping that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me..."
- Star Wars.
And it's such a sweet sweet torment.
and this is my Manik. An inconsiderate man for the world, one, with a marshmallow heart! my baby!
Rida
Shiv Shakti
