The Love Story Writer
He picked up his pen. It had been a long time since he had written something worthwhile. Random scribbles were strewn all across the pages- thoughts that had looked so promising, epiphanies that appeared so beautiful, and words whose order looked like magic. As he leafed through the pages searching for an empty one, the vague thought that had occurred to him kept on growing in his mind. But as his eyes hopped onto a clear white empty page to commit the act of writing, another thought started settling within him. The thought was an inconvenient and familiar question. What if it didn’t turn out well just like his previous efforts? He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His pen now felt as heavy as a mountain.
The struggle between the duality of his thoughts was sharp and violent. Each thought twisted and twirled around the other in the basement of his mind. Soon they had traveled across his mind, through heart, and reached his long, slender fingers that held the pen. His face showed no signs of the tumultuous struggle that his thoughts were undergoing in his fingers. He knew the struggle wouldn’t last long. He had to make a choice soon or all will be lost. He blinked and then involuntarily his fingers stretched and the tip of his pen touched the virgin paper. It felt like an electric overkill.
The next drop of ink was going to be decisive. It would either start a story or would lead to another random scribble. He blinked to buy some time. The struggle had now become a violent dance between incompatible urges. He blinked yet again. The next moment his fingers wobbled to and fro instinctively, as the drops of ink were arranged in definite patterns.
And thus he started weaving a love story- a story that one would fall in love with every time one reads it. It would present love in all its beauty, loveliness, and more importantly in its truth. Of course, he knew that it was one of the biggest challenges he had ever faced. The simplest reason being that he didn't believe in love. For him, love was as real as the famed ether in a vacuum. He never thought of love, he had to imagine it. He considered all romantic works as fantasy and speculations of writers who were adamant about believing in love because it helped them find some kind of meaning. To him, all lovers were delusional people running after a mirage that they very well knew that they will never find in their lives. To love was to be cast out into alleys of false and pretentious dreams.
And so the challenge before him was unfortunate and huge. But he was facing it with courage. Words kept flowing out of his pen one after the other.
“She didn’t notice him when she first saw him. He sat facing her, with a crumpled paper in his hand. There were twenty other students seated around the conference table, waiting for the debate to start. She was confident of her arguments and of herself. She was discussing a point of contention with her teammate when she felt that the boy sitting in front was looking at her. As soon as she looked at him, he bowed his face to look at the crumpled paper in his hand. He was clad in a white shirt that looked dirty because of its age. A puny little maroon tie with a non-regular knot was hiding the bare threads on the shirt that had ruptured from a couple of lost buttons. His hair was neat and short and his face looked pale and skinny.
She looked around the room. She observed the neat and bright uniforms of the other boys. They were proud and their faces emitted a glow of excitement for the debate. They looked more handsome and than the boy with the crumbled piece of paper. She shrugged away her focus from that boy and looked at her notebook filled with arguments and rebuttals.”
He scribbled the entire paragraph he had written with a bold stroke of ink. Somehow the development wasn’t what he was trying to weave. He started once again.
“They met in a train. She sat on the window seat looking at the faraway hills and villages. He came loaded with heavy luggage that took much time for him to stack away. But once he had done it and sat down on his seat, he couldn’t help staring at the fair lady sitting in front of her, and didn’t even bother to look at the beautiful river that the train was crossing then and which flickered like a lightning in the lady’s eyes.”
He struck the entire paragraph, this time by drawing a jagged line across the entire length of the page. This wasn’t what he had in his mind. The pictures in his mind were fading, growing, evolving, and throbbing with love and emotions. But somehow he wasn’t able to reproduce it.
He took a deep breath and began again.
“But strangers are strangers only when they meet. For before meeting they do not even exist for each other. And thus when she met him, she didn’t even spare a thought for him. And even when he walked up to her, it didn’t seem anything special. But when he spoke to her for the first time, she felt as if she had met him before somewhere. That maybe they had met for a fleeting moment in the past without realizing that they will ever meet again. She felt that maybe they weren’t strangers after all.”
This time he almost shouted. He was aghast at this challenge in copying the imagery in his mind onto the paper. He almost copied the previous jagged line and struck out the entire paragraph. With a strange vivacity in his eyes that seemed to originate in the stubbornness of his ego, he began again.
“The street was empty and looked famished in the absence of the sun. A silly draft of wind paraded across the street every now and then. It blew with a slurred sound which seemed to irritate her. She neatly arranged her hair behind her ears every time the wind tousled them. But the wind would blow them out again in the open. She would tuck the hair behind her ears without complaining.
As she waited at the crossroads for the traffic light to change she kept thinking about the next two hours of her life. The next two hours could be, if all went well, life-changing after all. This audition could be her path to follow her dreams of doing theaters.
As she delved further into her dreams, a car whizzed past her like a hurricane and ruffled her hair. She tucked her hair beneath her ears again and looked up. What she saw first surprised her and then made her tremble. A few feet away from where she stood, a swath of redness was growing in size on the road with tiny red drops splattered all around it. Her eyes followed the red patch and stopped at a still body. The car that had windswept her hair had also hit this man.
She ran to the man lying on the road. The man was unconscious. She put her ears to his chest and could hear a faint beating. She looked all around hoping to find a car or maybe even another human being but found nothing except the pedestrian signal turning green. She looked far away to where the road seemed to emerge out of the sky. There a small shape of a car seemed to blip up and down steadily. If it was a car the man had some hope. She closed her eyes and prayed.”
He felt like striking out the paragraph again. He thought about why he wanted to do it. In the momentary mental negotiations, his pessimistic side won by a huge margin. A line was soon drawn through the paragraph that was supposed to wash it away to invisibility.
He put his pen down. The muse in him was still sleeping. All was not well. His love story was as difficult as love becoming more than just a fable. He lay back on his rocking chair and closed his eyes thinking why he wasn’t able to make his characters fall in love. Why do his characters seem to be only looking at each other? Why don’t they make a beautiful move that would give way to a sad and shining love story? Was he forcing his characters too much? Would they ever fall in love? These thoughts and many more clouded his head. And soon he fell into a deep sleep.
It was the rustling of the pages of his diary that woke him up. When he woke up he started looking around frantically. Drops of sweat were visible on his forehead. His eyes were now wide open and looked astounded. He looked all around the room frantically. He then stooped forward and picked up the pages of his diary and started leafing through his notes. He saw the countless pieces that he had struck out. He started reading through the scribbles and the strikes. When he finally closed the notebook, he realized that it was one of the strangest dreams that he had ever had.
He didn’t know what to do. So he sat back on his rocking chair and closed his eyes again. His recent dream came back all at once:
“It was snowing all around. The streets would have been utterly lonely but for the two figures that stood shivering in the snowfall in the middle of the road. They stood there holding on to their jackets tightly and their eyes locked in an unbroken embrace.
As the snow kept on piling up in layers on the earth, he spoke in a soft nervous voice,
“When I first saw you I couldn’t resist looking at you; one of the reasons why I couldn’t remember my arguments in that debate. Even though my timid self went back home with an empty heart, I never ever forgot those eyes of yours. And when our paths crossed again in a train, I could not believe my eyes. Of course, we were strangers then. But somehow I felt that someone was trying to forge a bond between us like some kind of destiny at work. But I also felt that some kind of power was working against us. I often felt that our story could have developed into a beautiful tale. But someone didn’t just want that.
And when I spoke to you for the first time, I again sensed this same stinking spirit hovering around us. Why wouldn’t it let us evolve together?
So, when you saved my life, the most fateful day of my life became the most momentous one. I knew that our destinies were not just intersecting but rather merging into a beautiful tale. And it is with great courage and hope that I ask you- will you mind spending the rest of your life with me?”
A tear came down her eyes. Almost simultaneously a smile lit up her face. And then their lips met in an eternal embrace.”
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