Romance

We first met in the college canteen when I was in the second year of my engineering. She has just joined the college at that time. She had inadvertently said ‘Good Afternoon, Sir' and I had nodded without looking at her. But there was something in her voice that had first attracted me. I abruptly turned and there she was. In a red salwar kameez, she looked lovely.

I think it was about a year later; she proposed. We were quite good friends at that time. We were sitting in a Barista with a cold coffee each, and her friends walked in. She had appeared shocked; apparently she did not want us to be spotted by them. But they anyway saw us and came to our table. Though inwardly beaming, I was surprised when she started talking about me as if we had been together for decades, in front of them. She had addressed me as ‘Honey' and ‘Darling'. Later, when I demanded an explanation, she had said that she always liked me and it was then that she proposed. Only after a couple of more years, I came to know that the ‘chance' meeting in Barista between us and her friends was pre-orchestrated.

She was always like that. Highly unpredictable. Her mood swings too, were very volatile. But I still loved her. Must say, with all my heart. She was a very ambitious girl. In fact, the most ambitious I have ever known. She always had exceptionally high hopes. Always planned to go higher and higher. Scale up new peaks. And she would never bask in her glories. By the time she had achieved a goal, there would be tens of others lined up. She always used to say, "Enjoying a success is sweet. But that brings complacency. Complacency destroys a human being. Instead of relishing the taste of success, we should work towards the next".

We had detailed our life together for the next fifty years or so. During the first five years after college, our focus would be on our career alone. Climb higher and higher, faster and faster, up the corporate ladder, earning both money and experience. Then, get married and start an establishment of our own. We had gone into the smallest of the details, and came up with the blueprint for our entire lives. Then, how can this go wrong now? Was there a problem which threatened us so bad that all of it had to change so suddenly and drastically? And, if there was one, why did not she want to talk it over rather than deciding something on her own?

Life is a race, dear; she had always said. Emerging victorious is always about making choices. Make the right choice at the right time with the right set of people. This is what keeps a winner and a loser apart. So that was what I had been to her all the time. Just a choice, isn't it? Am I just extrapolating and being paranoid? I don't know. But this seemed to be making lot of sense at the moment.

Strangely, now, after a whole day, I am not angry. I am not disappointed. I am just disgusted. Disgusted with the people around, disgusted with their mad rush to be somebody / something in life, disgusted with the place called world. I no longer want to be a part of this world. I want to be a non-entity. I want to cease existing. Not a very courageous person physically, I am surfing the Internet for the least painful way of doing it. God willing, I would come into this world again as a more practical and lesser emotional individual. Amen!

THE END