She Loves Me - She Loves Me Not

We have a sort of song. Kind of a crude song only for us. A song detailing the beginning of a journey, which was impossible at sight, but nevertheless it happened. But that story is different – to be told with a cup of smoked coffee, in a room under grey sky and thousand stars, preferably beside a wayward river. Maybe I will sing that song over guitar and let you humming on that night. But today let me tell you a secret.

That I know she loves me.

Don’t laugh. We are married, but we never took vow to be together. We never uttered those magical three words. We don’t know how it started, and we have absolutely no idea, when it will end. But we are best friends for last eight years, married for five years and a parent for last three years! Life has changed so much. Time has changed from a sip of vodka on a slippery tram-line in Kolkata to a bottle of unknown wine in a private beach in Mauritius under moonlight and before vast ocean. And yes, we have changed. But still I had this huge question. ‘Does she love me?’

It was nothing sort of a miracle that she fell for me. I had nothing but my typical confusions and pseudo-communism, a term aptly given by my good friends. I was from country-side and was shy. I loved walking around the city and hanging with friends. I loved books. I had few girlfriends, short stints - but not a single one like her. She was way better – sort of classy. She was strong-headed and independent. She was too much opinionated. She was different.

And when she started hanging with me, every time she left for home at evening, I knew by my heart that it was definitely the last time I was with her. Tomorrow she’d find somebody better – cooler -  smarter. It was supposed to be.

But she chose me.

I asked her several times. I asked her when she was so close to me that I could touch her breasts to feel her heart. I asked her when she was happy, and her smile was so infectious that I didn’t care for an answer. I asked her right after we made love, when she laid down spooning me - my hand on her and I could feel her heavy breathing. I even asked her once during a fight. But she never answered that she loved me. It was just a ‘like’, she told. She liked me, and that was it.

I never complained or fought or sought an explanation. I made a face that was a sort of ‘I didn’t care’ – or, ‘I knew it’ and ‘I was fine with it’. But every single time I asked her that question, my heart would thump like an earthquake – like a teen boy hoping for a magic. What if she did tell yes? What if her answer was different this time? What would I do then? But every single time my heart shrank further – my mind hid in a room at corner, where nobody was allowed and I smiled like a stupid, who looked like a stupid with a stupid luck. Better luck next time, stupid.

The fact is, I am a ‘stupid’ of another dimension. Real classy. I was expecting a formal kind of thing. Maybe an official ‘I love you’, or maybe a proper declaration of love through some typical girlfriendish or wifey acts, and in the whole goddamn process, I failed to realize what I was having – her unrestricted love, which she was showering on me every second, by all means of possible. And one night, when stars were blinking above and sky was grey, and we laid down on lawn-chairs beside a calm pool in a beach-side villa and we spoke of our lives, our choices and our priorities; and when she offered me a divorce for I could find a life of my own – a woman of my choice; and when before leaving me there alone, she kissed my lips murmuring ‘You are my best friend. You always will be’, I lost words and tears rolled down. I kept gazing stars for hours that night.

Each love story is different. Love has thousands of names. On that starry windy night, when the grey sky became a canvas, I visualized every moment she spent with me. How she used to skip work to meet me at station; how she touched my fingers and played with them while walking; how she lied to her mother to spend time with me; how she cared for me when I was all alone and depressed in my remote posting in Tamilnadu; how she did shopping for me and transformed me a presentable guy; the way her eyes looked sad when I had to leave for months and when she placed her broad forehead on my chest; how she loved to share with me her tiniest happiness, in detail.

Maybe she likes me, but it is no shorter than love. Maybe she never utters those three words, but the signs aren’t lies. It is obvious. It is written on the wall.

I am the chosen one for her.