“Who do we harm when we are together? Who benefits from our separation? But when we are not together, we are not we anymore. We become extinguishable. We smother each other, we smother ourselves. I do not think we exist in the singular. We exist in plural, we exist together. With each other. You in me, I in you, together, forever.”
I read this handwritten note in my grandfather’s copy of The Great Gatsby. The note made me achingly curious. I knew for a fact that this was not my grandfather’s handwriting, and my grandmother did not know English. Then, who was it? Is it alright to refer to the person as it? I was perplexed. I tried to distract myself but I could not succeed. Did my grandfather have a grand romance in his youth? Or did this copy mistakenly find its way to his library? I wanted answers to the questions I did not know how to frame.
But if this note was really for him, and my grandfather actually did not happen to live with this mysterious person, the jokes are on her because he happily spent his life with my grandmother. He did not smother himself. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. Sitting near the window, he was engrossed in his book. I do not know what came to me, I decided to put an end to the dilemma that I had been facing.
“Dadu!”, I shouted.
“Hmm”, he responded quietly without looking up.
“Dadu, is this book yours?”
He did not look in my direction, and after a brief pause said, “Anant, all of the books here are mine, bought by myself.”
I desperately wanted him to look at me, holding The Great Gatsby, but it was difficult to move him, to make him look anywhere except his book. I would never understand how a person can read so much, day and night, while eating, while walking. Anyhow, I mustered courage and said, “Dadu, I do not think this is yours. Please see.”
My voice was visibly shaken and toned-down.
He took a pause, removed his glasses and looked at me. He was annoyed, I could tell. But the minute his eyes fell on the book, his expressions changed. It was difficult to read what his expressions were trying to project. It seemed that a sense of disquietude doused him, and yet he was calm.
“This, this is also mine.”, he said as he wore his glasses again, ready to get absorbed again in his book. I kept looking at him, with the book in my hand. He was having difficulty fixing his eyes in the book. He looked at me again and said, “This book was gifted to me. I am sure this much information would not satiate you. It was gifted to me by my girlfriend, some 50-55 years ago.”
How calmly he passed on this information to me. My grandfather had a girlfriend some half a century ago. He had a grand romance like this in his youth where the lovers talk about extinguishing themselves if they are not together. All this new information was too much to grasp, yet I was pining for more. Of course, I did not want to imagine that my grandfather was ever young and he had such an epic love story whereas I can’t even talk to a single girl in my class. Or that he would love any woman other than my grandmother. Yet, in a way I had envisioned this. That this note was indeed addressed to him.
I kept staring at him. He stole a glance at me and said, “Latika. Her name was Latika.” I went near him and sat in the adjacent chair.
“And? Did you marry Latika?”, I asked out of what was an amalgamation of a genuine concern and query.
He looked at me, scrutinizing my face. “I married only one woman and that is your grandmother.”
I was relieved. “So? What happened to Latika? Did she extinguish herself?”, I asked jokingly. I wanted to crack more such jokes but I was scared of transcending a boundary with my grandfather, if there was any.
“Yes, she did extinguish herself.”
“What do you mean?”, I experienced an unknown guilt for the question I had asked earlier.
“Means, she killed herself.”
“Because you married my dadi?”
“No, I married your dadi much later.”
“Then why did she kill herself?”
“I am not sure.”
A sense of melancholia had drawn all over his face. I was unsure if I wanted to continue with this conversation. I thought it was making him sad. I felt bad for scratching his old wound. I continued, “I am sorry, Dadu. I did not want to make you sad.”
He looked at me and smiled, “Sad? I am not sad. I felt rather good. Talking to someone about Latika after so many decades.”
The conversation was “Who was she? Where did you meet her?”
“I met her in college. She was my classmate”, and with this he left the room. I could never forget this conversation which turned out to be my last conversation with dadu for he passed away in sleep that night. Maybe he was waiting to share it with someone.
Months later I discovered his journal where I found out how they met. I realized not every pair of soulmates end up together.
Yes, it wasn’t love at the first sight. And, I don’t think such things exist, falling in love with someone the moment you see them. It wasn’t love. I was something else. And we spent a lifetime construing that something. For now, I would say it was a pull.
It was the first day at my college and I was sitting in a big, dark hall, saving my diffident soul from overly excited people sitting around me. I was feeling nothing; I was absolutely numb, incongruous to what was happening around. It was then that the door opened and on the spur of the moment there was light. My eyes that were versed in the darkness of the room took longer time to adjust. This splintered my reverie but I was glad. And with the light, she entered the room.
No, it wasn’t love at first sight.
I noticed her, and years later I realized that she was the first person I noticed that day. There was neither thunder nor any loud music. And I knew that all the films I have grown up watching have failed me. The uneasiness that I was feeling since the morning had slowly started fading but then I heard a loud shrieking noise coming from my chest. My heart was throbbing so loudly that it pierced my ears and it continued for the complete minute-long distance she covered from the main door to the bench I was sitting on. Later when I asked her why she chose to sit next to me when half of the seats were vacant, she replied that she doesn’t know. That there was a pull.
Everything that I had been taught, all my learning failed me when she sat next to me. I forgot how one is supposed to talk, have a conversation. She must have realized that because she did all the talking, and I was allowed to answer in monosyllables. I was not talking, I was merely responding, yet I did not want that one-sided conversation to ever end. I was feeling shy to look in her direction but whenever I stole a glance, I noticed two things. Her eyes and her nose. Her plump-short nose flinched and blanched at every word she said. I was held spellbound seeing her nose dance to her tunes. And her eyes. I was confused. That was the most happy-sad pair of eyes. In her coruscating brown eyes, I saw artists doing macabre.
We talked for fifteen minutes, about our course, our academic backgrounds, favourites, hobbies, and then we fell silent. I abhorred the silence. I looked at her, her eyes were fixed somewhere, almost meditating. There was absolutely no expression on her face and yet she looked so serene. Suddenly her eyes turned at me, she smiled and said, “Latika, and you?”. I was taken aback. Had we seriously not told our names yet? I blushed and said, “Urooj”. “Urooj”, she repeated, looking straight into my eyes. It was peculiar, had she maintained eye contact for a longer period, I would have freaked out. She did not ask me to repeat my name, she didn’t ask why did I have such an unusual name or what does it mean. But she just echoed my name, with impeccable pronunciation, as if she was apprising me that my answer is correct, that I have said the name correctly. She brought me back from the obfuscating trance with a chuckle, “Hi, Urooj”. “Hi”, I let out a deep sigh.
We did not talk much after that that day. But I did find her stealing glances. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel relaxed not having more conversations with her because her sphinx-like aura was intimidating me. My palms were sweaty and my right leg did not stop shaking.
She left without saying anything.
World of Shubhika 
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