“On the day of reckoning when God will hold everyone accountable for their sins and will call all of us to say why you guys did this and that, I will get up and say: why YOU had such terrible things for me,” Tom.
Boys and girls, Moms and Dads, Brothers and sisters and great friends let me introduce –‘Thomas Black’. In short form- Tom. Tom was all: a good friend, a good son and good boyfriend but he always ran out of luck and life invariably threw lemons his way. He was a rational buddy who never believed in fairy tales no matter how much hard time he faced. He used to believe in the mantra of work harder you will get your due deserts.
I am not interested in discussing Tom and his fucking luck, destiny, fairy tales not even how he looks. I want to share his story with which a few of you might relate.
Tom was in his mid-twenties and for the first time in his miserable life he fell in love with a girl who was very religious and shy. But true to the saying ‘love is blind’, the religion and its moral injunctions couldn’t, quite inevitably, prevent this love story from blossoming.
Let me quickly wrap the damn story of Tom and his Girlfriend:
When the schools are open people are ready to polish their faces with different types of creams, but she was so beautiful that her radiant countenance reflected the noor that would have sent the sun hiding back behind the clouds. She hated her school not because it was far, not even because it was not religious but because she loved her sleep more than anything. She always wanted to sleep, sometimes on Tom’s shoulder, sometimes in a bus or sometimes in the classroom. The classroom which was very much connected to another department containing 59 Kg boy named as Tom. Every time Tom entered the so called classroom he was attracted by the reflection of light from her face which set his heart aflutter. She always looked at him with a smiling face not because she fell any sort of love for Tom, but because she felt bored by studies and her teacher who was as ugly as a rotten tomato.
One day when Tom met her in the relative privacy of the desolate school corridor he couldn’t prevent himself from handing over his phone number to her. (Reminder: The girl hailed from the same place where Tom used to live those days). The girl coyly gave Tom a ‘miss call’ on the number. Tom was over the moon with joy.
From then on the two ‘love birds’ chatted online till the wee hours of the morning. In this digital age the traditional matchmakers have lost their value in the market because of this Facebook and WhatsApp as the youth have taken the responsibility, to find their soul-mates, upon themselves.
The exchange of messages was relentless but phone calls were strongly avoided because both felt short of words in this type of communication and there were long pauses of silences whenever they talked over phone. A lot was promised on WhatsApp but all came to naught.
Misunderstanding is the root cause of destruction of love and life. In retrospection Tom was not wrong neither was his girlfriend.
When the unlucky lad and his so called soul-mate finally broke off, tears melt from Tom’s frozen eyes and his heart stopped beating. He kept on messaging and texting to her but she never replied. Words can’t describe the loss Tom felt at such utter display of callousness of his girl. He used to wake up in the middle of the night to see if there is an answer to his messages. Unfortunately there was none. Tom was a voracious consumer of news so he had downloaded a few apps of news websites which kept him updated about the world around him (which he had completely forgotten while he was love smitten).Theses website apps were making him hysterical as he received a buzz (news update messages) in the middle of the night. Tom, who was afflicted with insomnia by now, hastened to see if it was “her” message, only to face disappointment. Despite being sure that she wouldn’t message back, Tom kept fooling himself by impulsively checking his phone every time he received a message.
Her indifference was killing him from the inside but he decided to keep his feelings to himself. His friends were oblivious of his affair and the quick-fire separation. Even though he had wanted to share his closely guarded secret with his friends but he didn’t know how to broach this subject with them.
To be continued…
“I had enough of the irritating updates. I uninstalled all the apps who used to send me news; I subscribed to ‘do not disturb’ service on my sim-card and I just put my head phones on to hear loud and clear the sound of your message, but you never did”~ Tom
“She knows why she doesn’t want to message me, but I don’t”~ Tom again.