The Phone Call That Day

Her sobs were quite sonorous even over the phone. The salinity of the tears was enough to change the pH value of my heart. I wish I could extend a hand to wipe off the tears dripping down her cheeks at that moment, but we were separated by quite a bit of a distance.

I did my best to console her for the loss she was about to be a party to. She was going to lose an important anchor in her life---me. She was telling me about a young man who had accompanied his parents to her home for a formal visit. It was one of the final steps in an arranged marriage where she was to give me up for someone else.

The young man was quite good-looking, she told me. He had a promising future with a very good job, and he had all the qualities in him that anyone looking for groom for his or her daughter should have. She felt I was sure to lose the race to accept her in a nikah. We were bound by the traditions of the Indian society where a nikah is usually arranged by the elders at home.

She knew me quite well, but her acquaintance wasn’t enough to propel the theme of an arranged marriage. For this to be possible, I should have been in the good books of her parents. Her parents were also well-acquainted with me, but they considered me a good-for-nothing.

I had been struggling against the dictates of my fate for a long time. I was unemployed despite excellent academic credentials. I had been pushed into the company of the unfortunate by a couple of physical handicaps. I had been rejected from the list of her suitors because of my state of unemployment which has its roots in my physical handicaps. Despite all this, she loved me, and I loved her too.

I wanted to tell her parents that the ideal and perfect nature of the consenting parties in a nikah was not that mattered.  The couple should find happiness and bliss in the alliance. It is mutual compatibility that counts at the end of the day. We would have found as much bliss in each others company but for my unemployment.

I was unemployed; I could never convince anyone of anything. It was like trying to fill an empty glass with water from an empty jug. Here was someone with all the qualities I didn’t have; I didn’t stand a chance.

There had been several moments when we had enjoyed each other’s company. We had never done anything more than hold hands, but it made me feel more important than anyone else in the world. It pushed down the feeling of inferiority ingrained in med over the years of my being.

Her company propelled the greatest feeling within me. It was enough to make me wish to hold her hand for a lifetime: it made me feel good and important: I wanted to feel good and important for a lifetime. I wanted to feel on top of the world. I wanted to reign in her world as a king. I wanted the feeling to be with me for a lifetime.

My life seemed to be incomplete without her just as her life seemed to have lost quite a bit of its typical flavour without me. The tears flowing down her cheeks were loud enough to scream out the fact.

It has been quite some time since we hung  up the phone after the moist conversation that day. She must have forgotten about me and the phone call that day that declared the end of our love-story by now. She must be living happily with her husband in another part of the world, while I still await a phone-call from someone else on a happy note.