These words are engraved on the tombstone I stand before. The funeral ended hours ago but I couldn’t go home, not now, after all you are special, you made me realize what the world was like; not a heavenly paradise but a dark pit one in which once you fall you keep falling. No one would help, everyone is too afraid to leave the edge but not you. You jumped. When you couldn’t pull me out you jumped in and we both fell but somehow you hit the bottom and I …I kept falling.
I remember the first time I saw you, in the eleventh grade, down the corridor you were getting scolded. You looked ashamed and appeared very upset but as soon as the teacher left you threw your head back and started laughing. I was surprised to see the sudden change in your behavior. You caught my eye, smiled and waved I wanted to go back inside the class( I was the perfect student and didn’t want to be seen with an apparent delinquent) but something about your face was so mesmerizing , so beautiful that it kept me back.
See I think that there are only a few people in this world who know the secret behind a perfect smile and it seemed as if you did. I waved back. That was my first encounter with you. The next time we met was for a debate competition after all we were in different streams so our paths hardly crossed. We both had such similar ideas that we instantly clicked. I was having a lot of fun but inside I was just dying to see that brilliant smile of yours.
We won the competition and somehow we became fast friends. You’d come to meet me at lunch with all friends who welcomed me very warmly. Sometimes you’d even stop at my house which at that time was very near to school. The thing was that you almost never smiled, sure you laughed but to me it always seemed a little forced. I thought that the smile I saw the first time I met you was just an illusion. Anyways time went by, final exams came and went and soon we were in the twelfth grade. That was the turning point in our friendship, your friends buried themselves in studies and though you were intelligent you just never tried to study.
Once you came to my house and I asked you why and to my alarm tears started running down your cheeks. You quickly wiped them away. At first you didn’t say anything but eventually you opened up. Your parents were cruel and they forced you to make harsh choices and you had to make them, they were never home and never wanted to listen to you…you were lonely. You looked so sad that without thinking i just hugged you and you did too so tightly as if you were sacred that i disappear too. Like I said I wasn’t thinking and I blurted these words out-“if you get good marks I will always stay with you”.
I mean what I was thinking why on earth you would want my company. I was dull, boring and to top that I stopped growing like in grade tenth. You looked taken aback but slowly you replied-“Hmmm, you sure? Cause I’m pretty difficult to take care of” there was a moment of silence and then we both started to laugh, we laughed so hard that I was left gasping for air and then I looked at you. You gave the very smile I had been searching for and whispered-“Promise?”
It was at that time that I realized that I’d fallen. So I whispered back-“Promise.” With full assurance. Who knew that, that one promise would have caused us so much pain so much trouble that we would have to finally give in.
When the results came I couldn’t go to school, I was on sick leave. I still wonder what would have happened if I wasn’t? But that didn’t stop you. In the middle of the night like in a romance novel you came tapping at my window I ran down as quietly as possible to see you. When I came outside you were wearing a very gleeful expression, my face must have asked for itself because you showed me. You result- 100% in all subjects. I was so happy for you. I hugged you and then you suddenly kissed me. I was shocked but I did not reject you. It was so sweet. You broke us apart and said-“A seal that binds our promise “and then you ran home. I was so dizzy.
I thought that this was just the first page and that happiness will overflow and truthfully it did. But like they say- all good things come to end, it did too. I don’t want to remember what happened next. Just know that we were separated. I fell down the dark pit because I was weak; because I let people push me down criticize me for my choices. And even though you were brave without me you said your cause was lost and so jumped too. But you were like glass once you fell you shattered into a million pieces and no one could ever fix you.
I miss you and I hope that you would wait for me… me, who could not fight for himself. But when I look back I ask why??????? Why did you have to ruin our paradise? What did we ever do to deserve this?
Is it because you couldn’t see two birds flying freely ?
The truth is that no matter who we are if our choices are different, if they are not what people expect them to be the world, this world would never forgive us.
–END–
Guys this for all swasan, ragsan, swalk and raglak fans.