Loss of A Friend : A Prophecy

She loved to smell random flowers, born out of neglect in Maidan, when we sat on grasses and looked at sky-crappers lurking ahead. She loved to hold my hand, sometimes my arm into her, while walking down cobble-stoned footpath in the heart of City of Joy. She loved to kiss my fingers, and then forehead, and then lips in god-forsaken odd places – in a patched backseat of faded yellow taxi, on a broken rikshaw drenched in sudden shower, sometimes in full public glare – a sneaking kiss.

That was the best time of my life, but even at that happiness, I had this conviction that this’d not last forever. Sooner or later, she was destined to leave me to love some-other lucky one and to be loved thousand times more than I ever loved her.

But in my wildest dream, I never thought that my own children would steal her from me.

The prophecy was written on wall, but I was a naïve. I read the words, but not the sentence. I noticed the signs in bits, but not the bigger picture. And when I moved back to have a better look, it was clear – it was there. She was taken away.

We married each-other with a cliché promise that we’d remain friends forever, despite the horrible outcomes. We drew thick lines, made stringent rules, invented code-words to keep love burning from deadly couple-syndrome. The distance changed us. She began to love smelling cooked meat, born out of utmost care in expensive restaurants, where we sat on leathered chairs and stared at scribbled menu card. She still loved to hold my hand, when walking down from parked vehicle to restaurants or to avoid speeding cars and loved to kiss my mouth while alone in bedroom, even on crumbled bedsheets. This was the time I should’ve been worry, but her presence was so soothing that I fell in love with her every bit of ‘change’. But I wasn’t ready for the next.

We just had our second daughter. Till then I was allotted a time of her. We talked, laughed, planned trips and dinners, exchanged gifts and kissed over phone. We shared our anxieties over our first daughter, who was growing up fast and furious. We discussed our offices and lives – little flirts with strangers. But when she joined office after long maternity leave, everything changed. In a blink of eye and with unspeakable indifference, my own children snatched my allotted time and stole their mother from me. Considering their little exposures to this world, I even don’t know whether this was tantamount to ‘betrayal’ or not! And considering the disastrous impact of this particular change on me, I even can’t think of loving this ‘change’ as before! I am in a jinx.

She now loves to smell boiled vegetables, born out in pressure-cooker and seems yucky. She loves to feed the small one, while helping home-works of the big one, when the ‘old’ one silently watches them from five thousand kms through a grainy 7-inch screen and feels being a third wheel. She loves to kiss her daughters, always on crumbled bedsheets and when I appeal her to kiss me too, she laughs and sometimes forgets even that. We don’t talk alone – no more. She is not mine - anymore.

The prophecy comes true. She now loves some-others more than me and in return, they love her thousand times more than I could ever love. I can’t compete with mother’s love. I’m sad, but I can’t even reveal that for fear of feeling remorse later-on, or for utter shittiness involved in the thought even. I shrink myself further to the beaten bed with books and laptop and occasional glances to my phone for a specific call from somebody – meant only for me.

One day though I know, it’ll come. Isn’t it?