ch 70: "love does not think: heer"
''
love is a many splendoured thing
it's the April rose that only grows in the early spring
love is nature's way of giving a reason to be living
the golden crown that makes a man a king ... ''
she heard the words above the wild beating of her heart, which had nothing to do with the rapid pace at which she walked across the grass.
and heer thought wryly to herself that it was apt she was being heralded back into his life and his world with these words.
love. inexplicable, inexorable, impossible love.
she guessed that was what it was, what she felt for prem. she had no name for it for nothing that she had ever felt before was as intense as what she felt for him.
the only other feeling that had an intensity even remotely similar to what she felt for him, was what she felt for her father. for her mother and sister. if the world called that feeling by the name of love, then love was what she felt for prem.
she had been so certain that choosing to be away from him was the right thing to do. that when she chose to walk away, her mind would settle down in a new calm where she could find out what she was all about. and what would be better to fill the empty spaces with that being surrounded by students of art, and instructors, the rigour of sessions and work to be done on a defined schedule. of course, there was the art itself, with techniques and materials that she was only dimly aware of. with such compulsions, she would be able to find a thread that was her own again, that was pure heer maan.
yes, she had walked away from him with firm and calm resolve laid over a fiery ache as if there was something torn and bleeding inside of her.
as soon as the activity of travel and settling down into her new ''
home'' was done, the calm emptiness was gone. only the ache remained. she had found herself waking every morning to the memory of his eyes and his smile. for a while, she had wondered if waking up with the memory of him meant that she had dreamt of him the entire night. she had actually worried about it the first time she woke up with the feeling of his mouth under hers, only to be crushed by empty reality.
but heer was nothing if not a practical person. she had a job to do while in school in france. and that was what she was going to focus on, rather than spend effort in finding out if prem dominating her dreams at night was the reason she woke up with him on her mind.
in any case, she had more than enough trouble trying to keep him out of her head during the day when she was awake, and supposed to be in control of her mind.
at first, she had been more than a little horrified when she realised that she was sharing everything that she saw, heard, touched, tasted ''
with prem''. everything she saw that was new, she had been seeing with two pairs of eyes -- the way she saw it, the way that prem would have seen it.
she had tried for a while to tell herself sternly that she should stop making ''
prem comments'' and having ''
prem thoughts''. after all, how did she know what prem would have thought or said? it was not as if she had known the guy for that long, she would argue with herself.
but the worst conflict had been when classes had started. one week since she had left him, and she found that the prem in her head did not respect any kind of personal boundaries at all.
there she was, one out of a carefully selected 25 of some of the most serious students of art, learning about the great masters and the new ones, the ideas that had flourished and then waned, ideas that came in their stead. in a group that was used to discourse and argument, she stood out quiet and tentative. when she spoke, she was soft and slow, often times coming across as if she wasn't sure of what she wanted to say.
being reticent had not been entirely new to heer. she had always been more a quiet person than voluble. she had always been more of the watcher of life than someone who participated.
but only when it came the rest of life. when it came to her painting, her art, that heer had always been direct, focussed and driven. her words had been her brushstrokes, her understanding in her paintings. and these had always been sure. when she had lost her family, she had stayed away from her art, her voice. when she had found a reason to paint again, there had been the same directness, the same focus.
except for now.
now it was different. as always, she had taken her charcoal to paper when she had an idea as always, of where the image would be placed on the whiteness, "
center"ing the painting. but now? before the first set of strokes were done, her fingers would slow down, waiting patiently for her mind to resolve itself. her mind that was engaged in the same spin of that troublesome argument with itself. about exactly whose was the vision being put down.
her fingers as always, would move according to what her heart said. but her mind rebelled at what her eyes saw. heer had found herself going through reams of paper trying to form that first version of a painting. but not a single one was she willing to put down on the final canvas.
that had been what her first few weeks and months at the french art school had become. a new and very pretty place to fight the demons waging a war in her very own head.
in one of her more lucid moments, heer had thought wryly to herself that if the same battles were being waged, then she might as well have done it somewhere closer to home. for she knew that prem would always respect what she had wanted and asked for. even if she asked for some time and space away from him.
now, as heer skirted the crowds that were swaying to the music on the path that would take her back to face prem, she thought that one of life's little puzzles was why there were so many songs lifting the joys and the pains of love, but none that she could recall on how love was the least fathomable thing that humans have ever discovered.
Ye Hai Mohabbatein
