Tere Khat...love letters

Jinko duniya ki nigahon se chhupaye rakha…

Jinko ek umr kaleje se lagaye rakha….

Deen jinko jinhain eeman banaye rakha….

Teri khushboo main base khaat main jalata kaise….

Pyar main doobe hue khat main jalata kaise….

This song played over and over on the music player. This was one of her favorites and he thought it was it was too depressing. “Ghazals are for alcoholics…” he would mock her, to which she always responded saying one day I’ll make you like them.

Today, he was listening to it over and over again, just wishing she was here to see him. And also wishing he had one more chance of seeing her. He wanted to hold her one more time and tell her how much he truly loved her. If only he could hear her voice, even if it was a nag, just one more time. He wanted to tell her all those things that he had never said to her. In all the years he had known her, as a friend, a lover and a wife, he never expressed his true feelings to her ever.

She was an incorrigible romantic, crazy about candle light dinners, moonlit walks, holding hands, talking sweet nothings for hours, romantic movies and songs made her cry and reading love stories was her favorite pastime. He was the exact opposite, very athletic, loved outdoor activities, very eccentric needed his space and time, very ambitious and workaholic, hated romantic novels and could never understand why she cried buckets when Leonardo Di Caprio dies in Titanic or why she even liked him. And why she cried while reading PS, I Love You. He could never understand why she would want to spend hours on the phone talking sweet nothings whenever she was away. And why she would get angry if he didn’t respond to her lovey-dovey text messages during office hours. And why would she get angry at him if she felt he wasn’t saying what he really wanted to.

Caught in the daily rut of making a career and earning money he had put his personal life sort of on hold. After a long hectic day at work when he would come back with plans of reading something or working more and would always tell himself after I finish this or after I accomplish this I would spend time with her or I would buy her a gift or I would take her for a holiday. And each day when he returned home he was greeted by her with open arms, she would hug him, kiss him and he would back off saying let’s keep this for the weekend. He did this not because he didn’t want to love her, he was just postponing it to a weekend or some day when he would be free of all the worries. He always wanted to things to be planned, so he would plan his days, his work and his love. There was a time for everything, and she was his wife after all, she’s always there, so why special planning for it. 

“We’re always together sweetheart, then why should we do special things; each day is special isn’t it…”

In the initial years she thought he was being unreasonable and would argue this with him. But then eventually she made peace with it. She would just tell him this time that we’re missing out would never come back. Each time you don’t tell me that you love me when you feel like saying it, would never come back.

That evening, when she called him like always before boarding her flight, he yelled at her saying he was busy and she can message whatever she wanted to say. One more time his words made her cry and she just wrote “I will always love you….”

This was her last message, her flight crashed right after takeoff. And guess what, he got to know of the crash after three hours from the evening news. There were numerous missed calls on his phone, which he ignored while working. It was her office people trying to contact him and tell him about what had happened. He couldn’t believe what he heard. For the next few hours he just sat in his corner office alone, almost dazed reading the last message she had sent.

Today, he’s performed her last rites. The crash was bad, so not much was left of the bodies found. Now he’s back, in the house they made together, with her pictures all around. From the picture of their first kiss to this day; she had captured just about every moment and put them all around the house. She was all around her, talking non-stop, nagging him for something or other, yelling for no reasons, singing loudly or just cursing the whole world for not working according to her whims.

He opened her cupboard, her clothes had her smell, and he held them all close to himself, he didn’t cry. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that she’s gone. He was ‘comfortably numb’. He won’t see her again, ever. He took out all her stuff and spread it out on the bed, he favorite shoes, clothes everything had a story. And then he found a box. It was a nice velvet box; hand decorated and had his name on it. He opened it and there were letters. Lots of them all addressed to him.

He was surprised to see them, coz she had never given him any of them; in fact she never even mentioned them. He sat down reading them one after the other. They were written on days they had arguments and she wrote what she felt; on days, she was very happy wanted share it with him but he was busy; on days, they were away; on days, they didn’t get time to share feelings. Some were written in the middle of the night when she woke up after a bad dream and didn’t want to disturb him. Today he realized what she did when she locked herself up each time they had an argument or she was upset about anything. She had poured her heart out in these letters.

It took him two days to finish years of letters. The sense of loss was hitting him with each word she wrote. And he remembered each time they hurt each other on petty things, how many times he didn’t tell her he loved her when he should have. How many times she felt sorry but didn’t say it. How many times they missed out on beautiful moments in life because they were busy.

Life is short…Live it…

My sister told me about her friend who died a few days back. The boy was just 23 years old and the only son of a very established business family, died in a road accident. Till today I didn’t know if my sister knew any such person, finding my sister all shaken by this incident I felt there’s a need for all of us to think about something that we never think of, Death and Life. The one thing we completely take for granted is the life that we are living, we very conveniently forget that one day we would die.

Ankit (name changed), was just 23. He would have had a million dreams he would want to fulfill, like falling in love, like seeing the world, like experiencing the ups and downs of life and grow old etc. Now since his story came to an abrupt end, he would not be able to do that.

But what about us, people who are still living, are we living our dreams. I think the answer is NO.

A lot of people might say that it’s not true, because someone wanted to become a business tycoon; he became one. Someone wanted to own an expensive house, he now owns one. Someone wanted to be the head of the company, he became that. Most of us dream of material things and we strive to achieve them, and for us that is in the true sense living your dreams.

But tell me honestly, if tomorrow you get to know that you have just a few months left to live, what would you do? The question is very filmy, there are a thousand films I can think of, made on this question, but has anyone ever seriously given it a thought.

We’re all crazy collecting material happiness, ignoring friends, family and our own self on trying to be successful. And one day without notice it’s all over. Then what….???

I know of someone who’s a mother but spends 14-18 hours in a day at work, leaving her 2 year old daughter to be taken care of by a maid. Why…professional success. Then I know of someone who I’ll treats his family and ignores them and prefers to earn loads of money and buy property.

You know when my grandfather died; I was of course very sad and upset. I reached home dreading to see my grandmother’s face. And to my surprise she was calm and composed, wiping off other peoples tears. And every now and then with a brave face touching his forehead, I don’t know if anyone else saw what I did, but all I could see on her face was a hope that one last time he would open his eyes and tell her how much he loves her.

Not even one percent people in this world are as lucky as my grandparents were. They were married for 60 years and each day of at least my life which is a long time I saw them say “I Love You”.  And not just to each other, they did not spare the opportunity of telling each person they loved how much they loved them. And they both died surrounded by all the people they loved; with a smile on their face they left the world seeing everyone around them.

We might not be as lucky. We don’t know when our lives would come to an end and how. Would it be the end of the world as they say in 2012; Or World War 3; or a terrorist attack, bomb blast or some deadly virus infecting the world? We don’t know that, we don’t know when, where and how, but yes someday sometime for sure. And guess what when death stares us in the face, most of us would be filled with regret of not living our dreams, or not loving our families enough, or not having told the one I truly loved what he/she meant to me.

When I look around, I see people running after material wealth at the cost of anything and everything. People spending their lives scheming and plotting how to take away one bit of happiness or success from the person they consider competition. We compete for money, for success, beauty everything, we compete and fight hard to win. But what after you’ve won that competition; another one.

Ask yourself what truly makes you happy and how often do you do that.

Why are we so crazy about winning….???

What do we want to win….???

Why can’t we just live….???

How does it matter what country, caste, sex, religion or social status you are from…why can’t we be free to go where we want to and do what we want to??/

We hesitate in getting drenched in the rain because we worry about what people would think. We hesitate in crying or laughing out loud because of what people will think. We don’t do what brings us true happiness because someone somewhere (parents, spouse, or society) would not think very highly of it. And we don’t eat what we want to eat coz we want to be size zero, and appreciated by the world around.

We stop ourselves from everything, smiling, laughing, crying, singing, eating, and sometimes even breathing because someone somewhere would object to it.

We’ve given up our freedom, to get this stupid social system around us. A system which evaluates people on the basis of their material wealth, color, caste, sex. A system which is willing to kill and crush each meager life for the material benefits of a handful people. We keep giving up things or people we like/love for material benefits and silently one day it’s over.

And trust me, that day all the money and power holds the value of dust. At the end it doesn’t matter how many promotions I’ve had or how many houses I’ve built or how much money I have. What matters is did I live each day to the fullest. Did I do everything I ever wanted in life (not material things of course)? Did I tell each person who meant something to me how much I loved them and how thankful I feel for having met them? Did I ever make someone truly happy? Did I ever comfort someone who needed support? Did I feed a hungry child? Did I ever spend time listening to a lonely soul and telling them that they are not alone?

Unfortunately, Ankit couldn’t do any of these things, he was too young. But when you see someone die young, don’t be scared or sad, learn a lesson.

Life is too short; you don’t know when it would end. Live it to the fullest, live not to earn but to spread happiness, hope and love.

That’s the purpose each one of us has no rocket science to it.

Wrote this one a long time back...was lost in my folders... 24/10/2010

To Love…

I watched “Letters to Juliet” tonight. I wouldn’t say that it was the greatest romantic movie ever made; but it was special. It’s about a woman finding her true love, her soul mate after 50 years. And then I got thinking about this whole mystical idea called “True Love”. What is it? Does it exist? Have I experienced it or will I experience it? Did someone like Romeo and Juliet actually exist? If they did, how did they feel? How did they manage to love each other so passionately?

You know the whole concept of love thanks to movies like these or romantic stories and books has become a complete mystery. If we were to believe science, then a man and a woman meet or see each other. Their brain does some sort of calculations based on their body symmetry and their smell, and decides that they can have a healthy off spring. That’s what starts the chain reaction of hormones that makes us feel woozy all over and the two people get together to successfully produce a healthy off spring. Now that kills the mystery of love doesn’t it. But seriously, how do we fall in love?

Is this just a concept people fancy and write about or make movies about or something so strong and so passionate truly exists that makes people do crazy things? People die for love, they cross oceans for love; they betray their families for love. So what is Love, is it just the desire to produce a healthy off spring? Or there is more to it. What and who is our soul mate? Where do they come from and how does one get to know if they’ve found them?

You know when I actually think of true love, I always remember my grandparents. They didn’t have a Romeo Juliet romance, theirs was an arranged marriage. My grandmother was about 17 or 18 and my grandfather was about 24 I guess. Their fathers had decided who they would spend the rest of their lives with and guess what they found their soul mates in each other. I have never seen any couple more romantic than them. They did of course have their fair share of fights, arguments and disagreements, yet in spite of all these they were hopelessly in love. So passionately and hopelessly and deeply and mindlessly in love that even death couldn’t keep them apart for long. They shared a beautiful life together for 60 years, something that seems unimaginable to me. Sixty years is a bloody long time. And not even for a moment they left each other’s sight. It was like even if they were not physically together they still were.

It was awesome to see them together. And listen to them softly talking to each other sitting at the terrace watching birds fly, or just sitting together while he read the news paper and she lovingly looked at him. Her eyes would be filled with so much warmth whenever she looked at him. And he would never miss an opportunity to tell her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her. He would just rest his head on her lap if he was stressed and she would gently run her fingers through his hair. Sometimes they would just sit together silently holding hands. I guess they were at a stage where words didn’t matter.

The day he died, we all knew she was devastated. But even in that moment she kept running her fingers through his hair like she always did, looking at him with just love in her eyes. A look that said I’ll be with you soon. After he was gone, even though she was completely calm on the outside, her eyes were always looking for him. She died within six months.

I guess that’s what soul mates are and that’s true love.

Wrote this one a long time back...was lost in my folders... 1/12/2010