THE ROWER

THE ROWER
They were too impatient to live. They symbolized life within me: they were the beacons of hope illuminating the dark passage of my life. They had the potential to make me wish for another life that would have just the two of us. They were quite restless and agitated: there was a storm in the making; at moments they even trembled a bit. Each eye had a life of its own: each seemed to be thinking differently from the other on every conceivable topic. They made me cease to believe in myself; I didn’t know what to believe in.

I wanted to believe in the present. The present situation directed me to fall in love with the reality before me. A sequel of my failed dreams played in my semiconscious mind, but the reality before me was stronger than all the dreams I had once dreamt of. She was to be the catharsis of all my dreams that could not come true. I sometimes wonder whether I ought to thank my stars for the dreams that could not come true. All of them left an impeccable mark on me, all of them were an essential ingredient of my teenage and adolescence and all of them taught me important lessons of life. The dreams that could not come true seemed to converge in the reality before me.

The reality before me was screaming that adventure lies within oneself, not outside. I could smell the freshness of the carnival of life in her breaths. She was the physical manifestation of some of my ideals, if not all. Her lips were a beautiful me’lege of contrasts. Her face was as intricate as a maze, and yet from top to toe, she had no misprint. Her innocent gaze made me feel vaguely embarrassed---less inviolate, and more dishonoured than I liked. I began to wonder if I had a right to her after the countless infatuations, but her eyes came to my rescue. The eyes were now a part of the reality of my life. I wanted to live in the reality, they gave me a chance to forget my dreams.

My dreams were now in her hands. I looked at the henna-covered hands that had my destiny inscribed on them. I was not aware that the floral designs celebrated the charms of our sojourns that were yet to come. I felt too perverted a representative of the nature of man to be a part of her. I felt like a freeman pleading for the chains of slavery. It would be treason against masculinity, I know, but this could be a remnant of feudalism in India. Forgotten things came back to me, several occasions which I thought were great moments dropped out of sight. The result was kaleidoscopic; a myriad of golden moments rushed to the stage before me, but failed to replace the wonder before me.

The wonder before me blushed a little, although she could not have been aware of all that went through my mind. The blush, accompanied with the momentary ardour she had thrown into it, was so becoming that I was dumbstruck. The many colours of her face whispered aloud the secrets of the infatuations that could not materialize. I made up my mind to ask her about them, but I had to give up my resolve the very next moment when she looked at me with the freshness and innocence of a baby. The regular blinking of her eyes could have denoted the sunrise and sunset in the horizon everyday; they denoted the dawn of a new day in my life. She covered her eyes with her hands. I did not try to uncover the face. The hands would handle the oars of my life for several years to come; the rowing would be rough, it always is.