Tune mere jaana, Kabhi nahi jaana; Ishq mera, Dard mera!

“But I love you, for those thousands of smiles my lips cherished because of your heart felt presence. I love you, just like the poet loves his beloved in the verses though he’d never be appreciated for taking people into fantsies. I love you like a writer who loves a character, raise it and kills it, but still never forgets it. I love you like the sad autumn’s leaves, which are being crushed under the lovers’ feet in that lonesome garden. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” While moving her fingers over the words she wrote in her old notes years back, a few tears were felt inside but many more on her feverish cheeks.

Sitting on the window’s pane where once she used to laugh over those meaningless conversations shared on long lasting phone calls, playing guitar’s chords with,
“Tune mere jaana
Kabhi nahi jaana
Ishq mera, dard mera” in her empty, sad vibe and smelling the emptiness of those hand written letters; she hugged nostalgia with a burdened heart. Around were them piercing memories, haunting her existence, making her cry and laugh at the same time like a maniac. She dropped down some caffeine inside her restless body to calm her soul. Her love was as pure as the spring’s first flower which bloomed in the green garden, like that winter’s first snow fall which was cold and happy, like the first rain of burning summer and the yellow beauty of deserted autumn; it was a living symphony for her. She lived all the seasons in her beautiful heart which would always beat for him in a way so pure, so silent, so discrete that even her own conscience would not get to know.

” I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else”, she silently murmured with a little smile and shine in her teary eyes. Walking in the mid of night in this haunting room of memories all alone she realized, how her soul aged in a span of some time. How she lost the smile of her speaking lips, the throb of her lively heart, the cheering sparkles of her pretty words and all that belonged to the one who completed her like a perfect jigsaw puzzle, like the way two waves complete each other in a Physics’ equation, just like the way a saucer and a cup completed each other always, just like thorns always completed a rose plant, just like the way orange bed of nostalgia completed the sunset and a happy cloud of hope completes the sunrise, just like….. she gasped, with a fast beating heart, her eyes wet and lips all blue…

“Aashiq tera
Bheed me khoya rehta hai, Jaane Jahaan
Poochho to itna kehta hai”..

********

Slowly and silently she touched that photo album where a new gust of nostalgia hugged her like a sharp piercing knife, tearing apart her heart, suffocating her rib cage. I have loved your soul, the purest of emotions, the sincere words and the kindest heart. I have loved how we grew up together, in this symphony of ours. I have loved you in the darkest of nights and the brightest of days, I have loved you with my rhyming poems and my heart-wrenching prose. I have looked for you in every other boy, I would write you words and letters and their symphony. But I always feared to send them to you, for I couldn’t afford the last hope of you being a part of my memories. She stopped writing suddenly after realizing that her fingers had all bled due to holding hard the guitar strings for easing her pain. But it didn’t bother her as you always accept the pain in love. No, I am not insane, I just loved you but you ditched me, toyed with my fragile heart, clapped, patted yourself at the back for all the wrong reasons – for cheating over me.

Her hands were cold and her heart started sinking, but the moving fingers never stopped. She kept on writing, for if she could not live with him, she wanted to die with this last note in the name of her love. Without you , I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face – I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself. The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine. Now she could barely move her limb, but still she was living with the joy that she could feel her heart beating in someone’s memories.

***********

As she continued writing, her hands stopped for a while and she felt a ray of life in herself reading those old diary’s notes;
“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.”

She ended with a long sigh, a lot of tears and a stone cold body. She suddenly knew that if he killed himself, or died before her, she would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn’t live for very long without a heart. Her moving fingers slowed down, her heart seemed to come out of her chest, tears all over her face and neck, her mind was about to explode due to grief and pain.

********

“Oh darling, you have done a permanent damage to my guilty-less soul. The scars couldn’t fade way all these years, they got deeper and deeper, into my skin, my memories, my heart, my soul. But they were not only mere words when I told you that I’d die if you left me, my heart missed a beat while my lips uttered these words in front of you my darling. It has been a very long time since I’ve received a gift as extraordinary as your presence. You betrayed the most purest heart which did nothing but loved you, my dearest. I have loved you along the coffee sips and water waves, I loved you in the crowds where all I could see was your face, I loved you silently, dangerously, intensely. You promised me that you would give me everything, everything you wanted, as men in love always do. And I trusted you despite myself, as women in love always do. It’s the craziest thing, but I can’t stop thinking about you.”.

She could hardly see anything with her blurred vision but continued,

“…. But darling, you could not even give me your presence, the mere joy of feeling your existence behind me, yes you betrayed the time I started loving you more intensely. Yes, you deceived me…. you DIED before me and left me lingering in this sharp pain which did nothing but killed me before time.. But my love….listen…believe me… ”

She wrote down those last words before she closed her eyes forever after the joy of looking at his picture for the last time and cherishing the most meaningful smile ever…