Hesitant Love

 “I have always enjoyed watching the sun from here,” said Mr Dutta, moving his wheelchair to the window. “It is like a kaleidoscope.”

“I don’t get it,” Mini said with an obvious curiosity.

“Of course, you wouldn’t.” Mr Dutta smiled thoughtfully. “I have watched the sun grow old through this wooden frame. It magnifies the orange mornings and brings closer those mythical horizons exactly before dark.”

Mini nodded absentmindedly.

“I once bought a handmade kaleidoscope for your mother,” he added. “She loved it.”

Something about that statement drew Mini’s attention. She gained control over her wandering thoughts and asked, “You loved her very much?”

“Infinitely,” replied Mr Dutta.

They sat without words for a while, watching the same sun. It was old and orange, just like Mr Dutta had said, and yet so beautiful. It made Mini feel vacant.

“Is there something bothering you?” Mr Dutta asked.

“I don’t know,” said Mini. “It’s just that I have been feeling restless for some time.” She looked at her father’s concerned face and smiled to allay his fears. “It’s nothing,” she said, wrapping her arms around him.

“You can tell me your feelings child.”

Mini smiled and walked up to the window sill. She took some time before she spoke again. “Do you remember the science fest that I went to this July?” She asked more as a token of belief than memory. “I was in a Physics team, preparing slides for Electrostatics.”

“It was the third day,” she said after a long pause. “One of our teammates caught the fever and had to leave. His place was taken by Raghav.” She paused at the name, and pronounced it again inside her head, stabilizing her thought process before she could go any further.

“Yes,” she said as if assuring herself. “His name was Raghav. He had brown hair, cropped at the sides like military men. His eyes were brown too and he smiled at every little thing that one could imagine. He smiled at the prospect of charges being at rest while the rest of the world was moving at a maddening pace.”

“Did you two get along together?” Mr. Dutta intervened.

“Not quite well,” replied Mini. “But then, he was different,” she said. “He was unlike the others who took hours to understand simpler things. He was intelligent. He helped others with their projects. I remember once he praised me for my efforts.” Mini blushed while saying so. Her cheeks reddened when she added that Raghav liked the way she smiled.

“Who doesn’t like a smiling face?” Mr Dutta said.

“It’s not that,” she said. “He looked straight into my eyes when he said it, not like a friend, but something more than that.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. The way he tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ears was far too caring for a friend. It gave me goosebumps. I don’t know why but I felt an attraction for him. And yet he was so unapproachable.”

“Why do you say so?” asked Mr Dutta.

“I have been asking the same to myself,” she said, unmindful of her father who looked rather concerned now.

“He has never been clear to me. A vague sense of apprehension clouds my thoughts whenever I think of him. He eludes me even in my thoughts. No matter how much I stress, I can’t get a clear picture of his face. It is as if I have forgotten his face.” She said and looked at her father with guilt.

What a shameless creature I am. She thought to herself.

Mr Dutta rolled his favourite tobacco in a cigarette paper and puffed thoughtfully before saying that in spite of loving his dead wife for more than two decades now he could not get a clear picture of her either.

“I think there is nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Your heart and brain do not work at the same pace. Sometimes it is better not to stress too much.”

“Don’t tell me that you have forgotten Mummy’s face,” Mini said with a forced smile.

“Not completely,” replied Mr Dutta. “I do hear her sometimes in my sleep though.”

“What does she say?” Mini asked.

“Nothing,” replied Mr Dutta with a content man’s voice. “She sings when I am asleep.” He took the last few drags of his cigarette and asked Mini if she had heard Raghav in his absence.

“Only a few times,” she replied. “It doesn’t happen too often.”

“So what happened at the fest?”

“We stood together displaying our slides to whosoever was interested. I must commit that very few of them were interested in our slides but Raghav made up for their lack of interest with his humour. He smiled at everyone, asking them if they knew what electrostatics is.”

“And?”

“And they were people full of fantasies who had come to the fest as if it were a picnic,” Mini said. “But curiously, I wasn’t disappointed. I enjoyed those hours standing with Raghav who kept on cheering me. I don’t know how to put it but he could sense my feelings by just being there. He didn’t require me to tell him that I was sad or lonely amidst the crowd. He sensed it as if he had always known me and stood by me like……”

“Like what, child?”

“Like a soul mate,” replied Mini. “Please don’t get me wrong but I don’t have any other word for the feeling. It wasn’t a mere perception but a thick and solid feeling, like a real object that seeped into my heart while he was standing beside me. I felt something cold piercing my lungs, making way to my intestines, groping and fiddling with everything inside me until I felt weak in my knees and collapsed.”

Mini took a while to recuperate as if the feeling had found its way to her yet again. “I fainted, not out of fear or failure, but a sense of dejection. I was weak, always seeking someone’s shoulders to cry for my losses.” Her voice choked but she managed not to cry. She looked at her father and confessed that she wasn’t strong enough.

“I could never understand how you got over Mummy’s death,” she said in her choked voice.

“But I haven’t,” replied Mr Dutta. “I have only adjusted myself to live with her memories.”

But Mini hadn’t. She had lived her years as an aftereffect of her mother’s demise, under a constant threat of nostalgia and memories, afraid to step out with her weakness. She often spoke to herself while staring at a blank in the open sky through her father’s kaleidoscope. She would close her eyes and draw outlines of her mother’s face from memory.

She did the same that afternoon in front of her worried father. Her eyelids throbbed, and flashes of red and black kept appearing and disappearing, until at last she managed to find the face there.

“She was beautiful,” Mini said after a long pause. She turned to her father and saw him smiling.

“She said the same for you,” said Mr Dutta.

“She was brave too,” Mini spoke aloud.

“And so are you,” affirmed Mr Dutta. He could see Mini perplexed at his comments so he went ahead to clarify himself.

“Seeking strength in someone else is not a sign of weakness my child,” Mr. Dutta said. “What do you think God has made love for? It fills in your emptiness, allays your fears, gives you courage and most of all, it makes you happy.”

“Everyone has his share of fears my child,” Mr. Dutta emphasized. “Either you live with it or fight.”

Mini was inconsolable now. She had her face covered between her palms and was crying like a seven-year-old. Mr Dutta left Mini undisturbed, allowing her to loosen the knot in her heart. He didn’t know if she was crying for her dead mother or for Raghav who had perhaps touched the chord of happiness in her being. He let her cry for whatever the reason might be. He spoke only after Mini had stopped crying and was silently watching the pedestrians on the other side of the street.

“I think you love Rahgav,” Mr Dutta said as a matter of fact, startling Mini who almost jumped on her feet.

“Oh please,” asserted Mini.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Mr Dutta, rolling another cigarette. He was concentrating not spilling tobacco on the ground, tapping the roll gently upon his thumbnail, completely oblivious to Mini who stood dumbfounded in front of him. He lit the fag end and took a few drags before he spoke again.

“I mean what’s the problem.”

“There isn’t except that I don’t know him well enough to love him,” Mini cleared herself.

“But you do not know yourself either,” said Mr Dutta.

Mini waited while Mr Dutta finished his cigarette. She waited while he moved around the room in his wheelchair, probably making a mockery of her.

“As for that matter, even I didn’t know about your fears till today,” Mr Dutta said. “But I love you, don’t I?”

Mini was perplexed now, fuming over herself to have confessed everything to her father and now denying her own feelings.

Is it true that I loved him? She thought, trying to recall a moment that she could relate to such a feeling. Did it actually happen? She asked herself as if it was an event.

“I don’t know,” she said to herself aloud, thinking of the last day at the fest. Raghav had come to ask her for lunch. He was different that day, sombre and grave, unlike his character.

“He said that it was important for him,” Mini mumbled. “So I agreed to the lunch.”

“It was only when I saw him again that afternoon did I see that he was sad. His eyes were not all that brown and cheerful and his voice not at all gay. It was like he had held himself back for some unknown reason. I felt sorry for him. In fact, I actually felt his loneliness that afternoon, without him having to tell me. I could see that he was nervous, unsure of himself for the first time, speaking more to himself than me. But I couldn’t hear him.”

“Didn’t he say anything?” Mr Dutta asked.

“Yes,” Mini said. “He said he knew how I felt the other day.”

“That’s it?” asked Mr Dutta. “Was that all he said?”

“Yes,” replied Mini. “And we exchanged our telephone numbers before he left.”

“But he hasn’t called,” said Mini sadly.

“Have you called him?” Mr Dutta asked.

“No.”

“Well then go ahead. Call him. He might have been waiting for your call.” Mr Dutta said gleefully.

“But shouldn’t he call first?” Mini asked.

“Maybe he is afraid,” replied Mr Dutta.

“Do you think it will work?” asked Mini.

“Definitely,” replied Mr Dutta. He then retired to his room, complaining of afternoons that had always made him sleepy.

Mini took a long time to find Raghav’s telephone number and even longer to dial it. Her heart skipped a beat or two when she heard him on the other end. She remembered the voice. It has disturbed her in her dreams as well as in her waking life. She kept the receiver out of anxiety and sat by the window for the rest of that afternoon. She looked at the lethargic city through her father’s kaleidoscope, people walking in their sleep, oblivious of the fact that she was in love. She cherished that moment when she finally found love, that afternoon when it became clear to her, that make-believe kaleidoscope that her father was so proud of. She peeped inside her father’s room and saw him deep asleep.

After she had consolidated her feelings and pulled herself together, she called Raghav again. Her voice choked when she heard her name from the other end. Raghav knew it was her, he knew she was listening. He said he had loved her from the very first moment he saw her, that he was alone just because of her, that he could not sleep properly for the last few months and that he had been preparing to say the same for a very long time now.

Mini at last asked in her choked voice. “Why didn’t you call me before?”

“Because I was afraid,” said Raghav.