December 2002: Winter arouses an amazing feel. The expedient feel to get into a blanket makes you love your bed even more. The low beam sunlight adds colour to your skin and you want to dip in and enjoy each ray of the golden sun that touches your body. The impulse reaction to withdraw your hand, when you touch metal and rub your palms to produce heat. The happy feeling when you inhale peppermint air and the fog your mouth emits when you speak. The immense gratification that food items bring with this weather is commendable. The sweetness of gajar ka halwa and hot kulhad milk is rightly balanced with the royal spicy taste of paaye ka soup and seekh kebabs.
Holding a hot cup of coffee in your hands seems just right. It soothes your cold palms and smoothens your inner soul. Everything seems surreal, and more so if you are in love. There is something about the season of winter and the feeling of love. Even though no clear analogy can be drawn, they are interconnected somewhere.
I was in love. I was not able to say it loud to myself, forget others. I wanted to be honest and come out clean, but how could I? I knew it was convoluted. Srivastava and a Jawed was not a mix. I tried to fight back my feelings and keep it under surface. The phone calls were at its peak and exceeded timelines and friendly conversations.
“I wonder how much we can talk and share on phone?” I said giggling.
“I can talk to you for hours. I wish I could listen to you all the time,” he said.
“All the time? Really? You like me now, that’s why.”
“No. I loved you forever, that’s why.” He said as calmly as he could.
I expected him to laugh but I was wrong. The pragmatic approach in me laughed it off, but he was in the mood of confrontation.
“I have always been aware and vocal about my feelings for you. When will you take the next step? We talk at our college and once we are back home, we get glued to the phone. We don’t miss an opportunity to listen to each other. Sometimes we don’t have much to say and yet we decide not to hang over the phone. What do you call this?”
“A real friendship, which is now an addiction,” I tried hard to dissuade the topic.
“Be real”
“I need to keep the phone down. Someone is coming.”
“Who is?”
“I don’t know”
“Listen. This scares you, but this is real. I fell for you right from day one. I still remember the day I first saw you, wearing a white polo tee and blue jeans. You were passing by the college corridor when I laid my eyes on you. It was not that I saw you that day for the very first time, but something about you struck me that day for the very first time,” he paused.
“You never mentioned this before.”
“And will mentioning this now make you confess how you really feel about me?”
In just 6 months of acquaintance, he had learnt how to catch me off guard so I was compelled to say the truth.
I found silence the best at that hour.
“I hope you realize your sealed lips heralds your acceptance of your feeling,” he was adamant.
“You still can’t read me,” I was defiant.
“People meet each other, learn their body language and voice tone, start to read their eyes, but it takes years to get to know their silence. We have started this relationship by learning each other’s quiescence. I can not only read, but write your silence.”
After keeping the phone down, I could not keep those feelings aside. They wanted to surface and embrace our relationship. A part of me urged to pick up that wireless device and let him know how I felt. Even if I admitted or not, he knew what was in me. After a battle of my inner-self with me, I won.