Maya sat in her room, in an emptying loneliness, silence towering around her, deep in her thoughts. She had her phone in her hand and the words spoken over the phone were still revolving inside her head, causing hot tears tickle down her cheeks. She recalled what was said over the phone, took a deep breath, and dialed her best friend’s number. Three rings down and her friend picked up the phone; “Yea, what’s up? Guess what happened,” babbled on her friend but stopped herself as a sob broke from the other end. Silence. Sobs cracking up from the other end. “Maya, what’s wrong honey?” No answer. Sobs. After long fifteen minutes, the sobs subsided and Maya finally spoke, “He called me up to tell me that he’s going away, he doesn’t want to keep any contact, he thinks he’s not worth me. Its all over. Its all over.” Sad, deep sigh! “Look Maya, I think this is for the good of both of you. You guys need this separation so you can put your heads and hearts together and know what you both want from each other.” Tears streaming down Maya refused to acknowledge that he really was gone. “ How can I live without him, without talking to him? He has become my habit. How can I kill my habit just like that?” she posed these innocents questions at her friend not knowing that Time was going to change and then heal everything.
Putting the phone down, she cried herself to sleep, her wrecking cries her lullaby that tried comforting her. Maya was the girl from every girl’s dream; a pampered and loved child, the only child who got everything before the words uttered from her mouth. The apple of her parents’ eyes, she made her parents proud and happy with her. She was obedient yet rebellious. A pretty girl who could do anything for her parents but committed a single mistake that became blunder of her life, the gravest mistake in her family’s eyes. She fell in love. Love was a strange thing, it had created magical spell around her and it stirred emotions in her that she never knew existed. It dared her to do such things that she dared not do before.
Love had taken hold of her but the same love was changing her life again, destroying the very meaning it had given her, marring her soul. She sat alone, loneliness her company and support. She sat staring at her hands, trying hard to be strong, the hot hears rose in her deep eyes but she gushed them back with a sad but determined sigh. The magic within and around her had disappeared and her life had blurred out from the spells of enchantment. She now saw days as days without the magic of sunshine lifting her spirits and nights as dark and long without the enchanting spell of moon and stars that made her soar high up to them in the world of beauty, joy and dream! Nothing remained now except a bitter reality and an enveloping sense of loneliness. She didn’t know what to do except wait and hope that he would change his mind and come running to her. Days passed by but there was no news of his. She had tried calling him but he had destroyed the number as well. He left leaving behind nothing of his existence, as if he were just a memory. Every day she struggle with unanswered questions. The struggle within her, tore her self, breaking her heart and shattering all those beautiful dreams she had decorated her life with. Her parents noticed the sudden change in her, they couldn’t bear their only child withering away in such an unknown pain that her hollow eyes and smile-less eyes reflected. The laughter died on her lips and the cheer spun out of her life. Her parents couldn’t understand and never knew what was eating their daughter for she could never divulge it to them. She had to fight alone the stalking demons of her life.
With the passage of time, she got used to the fact that he was gone but she had her hope alive that he would come back, one day. She was always lost in his memories, writing to him a letter each day, in her memory. Some days she wrote something in diary that inched her to move ahead. Today she had written on her diary. “You are far, far away, in a cold place, maybe but my heart has preserved you in warm memories. I hold out my arms, can’t find you but when I hug myself, I feel you within me, comforting and warming me. You have the best piece of me with you and I know you will keep it safe till we meet again.” This was her undying hope and untiring faith in her love. She knew her day would come when everything would be fine, happy and she had her faith in God that He would guide her and create a path for them she always prayed for him and his safe return to her.
She moved with the tides of her life; finding her solace in her parents’ love and laughter in her friend’s company. Her friend supported her but discouraged her from hoping for his return and Maya smiled at her friend’s naïve disdain, but her friend never really got well with the love of her life.
Six full months had passed since he had called her. The memories, always too painful, came back to sting. There was never a moment in a day when she didn’t remember him. It was if she breathed him. Never did he die out from her thoughts even though it was hurting her, scarring her heart! But did she care about herself, she never did!
Sweeping with time, she moved on with his memories kept safe in her heart. She often came to the very place they had met years before, those years now seemed ages back. It was a cliff where she had met him when she had come there with a couple of her friends for a girls’ day out. The cliff spread out towards the sea, giving the place a dangerous yet exotic bearing. One could look out at everything yet nothing from this edge. After they got into relation, they always came to this spot that became a trademark of their love.
Sitting on the edge of that same cliff, she looked out at the splashing waves rocking against the stony precipice. Her phone rings and she picks it up. “I need to tell you something. Go to your best friend’s place and you will know the deepest truth”, a strange voice spoke. The call ends and it shakes her. She can’t fathom what’s this all about. Not understanding anything, she calls her friend, who tells her that she is busy shopping with her parents and will get back to her later. This confuses her and she picks herself up to do as the unknown call had bade her. She runs to her friend’s house, hoping to find it locked but to her utmost chaotic self, the house isn’t locked. She walks to the door and finds it locked from inside. She now walks around the house towards her friend’s room that is far out east. Her heart is thudding loudly for some strange tension that’s tangling her in fear. She hears her friend’s voice and before anything, the sudden truth spurts out before her and that’s when she hears his sweet, husky voice, after six long months, the same voice she was so deep in love with, the voice that now said, “I love you” over and over again to her friend. She crumbles and fall in the bottomless numbness, blackness engulfing her!!
