She stood there at the corner with a thermos flask in her hand. She was almost invisible
to the eyes that were busy finding out the deeply and cautiously hidden pain in
the souls of each other. The fringes on
the oculus lids ageing more than six decades of experience were yet not weary
of all the tears and dripped sweat that those had endured over the years. They
were still sharing the pinched smiles of youth at the corners, the unspoken
sensual stares, the curled eyelashes of pride, and above them all, the
beautiful memories they beheld each day. Monika couldn’t help but smile, even
though she was standing in the general ward of a hospital with loads of
patients by her side; some dying, some dead, some on the verge of extinction,
and yet that elderly couple stood out the most. Might be because they were the
persons who brought her to life and the ones who made her look at life the way
she could have never imagined herself.
She zoned out a bit to her past. The past was dazzling in the background. Its shine was
bright enough to harm the sensitive optical nerves to completely forget how to
look at the future. But she was a trained trooper. After ages of struggling,
she learned how to defend and armour herself with her confidence. Shaking the
clumsy thoughts off, she slowly made her way to that aged couple in the front
and offered the thermos flask in her hand.
“Mom, let’s tidy up. The uber will be here anytime soon.”
“Where were you all this time? Was there a queue?” – Monika’s dad asked while trying to
look at the door to figure out if the hospital was unusually busy that day.
“Uhh…..I met an ex-colleague. He was here for some regular check-ups. We chatted a bit.
I can’t ghost him. Right?” – she laughed with all her might to cover the
reality of meeting her subconscious self.
“Can you hand me the clothes over there?” – her mom was busy packing and didn’t even
look while instructing her what to do.
Monika picked up the clothes nearby, folded, and placed them in the bag they were
supposed to be carried in. While organizing was the kind of stuff she was good
at, people are not always spacious enough to accommodate their own habits in
their innermost emotions. Monika was the healer, the organizer, the manager,
the judiciary, and the advisor everyone would look up to with lost eyes for
guidance. As strongly as she loved to solve the miseries and mysteries of
everyone else’s, she readily subdued herself in front of the universal nature
of entropy. She was scattered. Presently, being mentally stable somehow
illusioned her to be unstable in reality. She longed for a commotion of
emotions in her mind. Always. Forever.
“Honey, you need to be faster.” – a tingling whisper giggled through her
ears.
She hurriedly moved her hands, cleaned the side table, checked the
drawers and they were ready to leave that place which nobody wanted to visit
but still needed to. Then again, if there was no sickness would people have
valued how important and necessary health is? If there was no hatred, regrets,
and illusion would people have considered love to be worthy of all the praises
it gets? Would people have the power to overlook the lifelong pain to live the
life of love for a few years or maybe moments?
The simple answer is ‘No’.
The phone vibrated in her pocket to notify the arrival of the car. She
checked the phone and then took the bags from her mom’s hand.
“Let’s go. We have taken everything? ……check……bills paid? ……..check……….anything
else?”
“No. We are done.” – Monika’s mom said while re-examining the room once
again for confirmation.
Her days there had been long and tiring but she was the epitome of
patience and tolerance. Someone who could wait for her husband to reciprocate
throughout her entire youth, raise her child completely on herself, bear with
all the rumours and gossip and the uneasy questions every now and then, and yet
not forget to love the person for whom she had been suffering, was not a ‘fool’
as people would point out. She carried her sacred love like a crown atop. Even
though her kingdom was shaken and threatened with extinction, she chose to
stay. As a result, the long-awaited bond that she could only think of was at
her disposal. The marriage that was about to get broken, that made her regret
her life choices for the first and last time in her life, and that let her
youth years be a complete mess, was now flourishing with all its beauty.
Monika’s mom was a strong woman with the facade of an emotional fool.
Monika’s dad on the other hand was a confused soul. A person who didn’t
know how to execute what he felt. The
innocent love he had in his heart wasn’t capable enough to face the brutality
of the world. He lost and was utterly ruined. Yet, he couldn’t surrender what
his emotions were. The losses kept increasing exponentially until he finally
figured out how to turn the leaf over and start afresh.
“Is love overrated?” – Monika tried to sound as normal as possible when
she asked the question out of the blue, the moment they reached home.
Both of Monika’s parents were dumbfounded. No one could have expected
such curiosity standing then. That too from Monika.
“Love is all about bearing with the one you love. Bearing needs understanding
and a tough mind to wait. You think that’s an easy job?” – Monika’s mother
finally answered while trying to settle her husband in the bed. Though she was
busy tidying the bedsheets after those got a little crumpled, she looked back
to search for the answer from her daughter.
Monika nodded her head in disagreement.
“See……You got your answer. Something which needs effort can never be
overrated. All of us have an exact scale of rating engraved in our mind and we don’t
do anything unless we find it worth our indulgence.”
Monika’s dad raised his brows as if he was grossed out by the answer.
“You sound so calculative! Love needs understanding and maybe a bit of calculation
but it is not the entirety of it. It is like a river that needs to find its
direction through the strong and harsh face of the earth. It needs power and stimulus
to overcome inertia. Which is not easy. So, yes I agree with your mom on one
point, ‘something which needs effort can never be overrated ’.” – both of them
said the last line together.
“Seems like you two got a common ground at last” – she said while trying
to hold her laugh.
“And seems like you finally found someone to join in the couple games at
functions with us. Else why this question all of a sudden? Is he the ex-colleague
you were talking about at the hospital?’ – Monika’s mom was straightforward like
she always had been.
Monika didn’t answer. She just laughed out the comment. But the question
she asked was still stuck in her mind. She was still wondering about her answer
to that question while on her way home from her parent’s house.
“Is love all about efforts?”
“Isn’t it fated? Like how we read it in the novels?”
“Isn’t love about being myself? Why do I need to make efforts to be like
a person I am not?”
“Is love worth the wait and the pain?”
She indulged in her thoughts and how she managed to cope with her life
in her childhood. The reunion sounds great. Love does have the power to bring
back two deserted people together after decades of separation but what society forgets,
for the most part, is that love is not just about two people. It is about all
the people that are directly and indirectly affected by the decisions of the
two in love. It may be their child, their parents, their friends, their
relatives, or even their own unknown hidden selves that they tried to hide from
the world, the faces which they previously considered to be reserved only to
themselves. Monika’s life wasn’t tough. She was well educated, had no financial
problems, had a successful career, and was leading a happy life as everyone
else could see with their naked eyes. But it wasn’t easy either. Nobody’s life
is laid with roses. She was not an exception. She was bullied for being a
bookworm, an introvert, and a so-called unsocial person. Day after day she used
to wear a fake smile on her face whenever she was asked, “Why isn’t your dad here?”
and she would readily answer, “He is busy.”- without a second thought.
But people are always anxious about others. The curious stares they used
to give after hearing the same answer for the umpteenth time in a row, made her
step in front of herself and proclaim-
“Oh. You know, he doesn’t work here. He lives abroad. He comes once or
twice a year though. Work matters.”
People got finally convinced after the term ‘abroad’ was used. Somehow
the only registered excuse that parents could give to not attend their child’s
school activities was ‘WORK’. All the other excuses had always been considered
fishy and a hot topic of discussion. She learned to lie in the face of others at
a young age. That was how she avoided all the unnecessary and unwanted comments
even though lying slowly and slowly degraded her mental health. After she got a
little older, she stopped giving explanations to others. She didn’t want to lie
to anyone anymore but by then she was already entrapped in the net of lies that
her younger self had set. On top of that, some rumours were impossible to stop.
Then all of a sudden, her parents were back to normal when she had already accepted
her life the other way. She was happy to hear the announcement but she couldn’t
put the fact out of her head that she was snatched off her right to have lived
her childhood in a peaceful state.
“I am awful” – she said to herself whenever that thought popped up in
her mind.
“They deserve to be happy. They love each other. Isn’t it a beautiful
ending?”
She repeated these lines to herself whenever she felt her inner demon
was going to outcast the little conscience she was left with.
It had been six years since. She was now a lady with a high-profile job
and living in a metropolitan city alone. Still, she was not used to the way her
parents presently interacted.
“Is love about the process or the ending?” – she was thinking in her
mind as she opened the doors of her apartment. She put away her shoes and put
on the slippers the moment she entered but didn’t turn on the light. After a
week of tiring hospital journeys, she finally was free today of all the round
trips and anxiety. She stretched her arms and made herself as comfortable as
possible while sitting on the bare ground.
“Welcome home honey” – it was the same known whisper. The whisper Monika
loved with her life and longed for whenever the darkness around her was
unbearable. Her face lightened up the moment she heard the voice. But she
didn’t try to look up.
“Answer me…….Is love overrated?”
“Depends on what kind of love you are talking about”
“In general”
“Do you love me?”
“I do……….”
“Then why think about the rest? Why bother if it is overrated or
underrated? You have it in your possession. Right? Why think about others? “
“You mean….It varies from person to person? To me, it may be overrated
while to others it is worth it? There is no generalization?”
“Exactly my thoughts. Didn’t your dad and mom say love is a treasure? And
you on the other hand are in a dilemma.”
“Hmm…..I am”
“Do you want to know the truth?”
“Yes”
“The moment you thought love is overrated is the moment you said to
yourself that it is not. Has it been, would you have wasted so much of your
time thinking about it? Would you have tried your entire life to face up to
yourself because you couldn’t love the people you loved? Would you have been
afraid of relationships because of what you experienced in childhood if love
was such a simple matter? Would the lack of love be able to make you this
mentally sick to imagine me to become a placeholder of your unreal idea of love………?”
Monika was stunned. For the first time, she tried to look up at the face
of the owner of the voice but failed. Yet the masculine voice continued. The
voice didn’t sound unsteady rather it was calm.
“You love yourself. Don’t you? Do you think loving yourself is
overrated? The love that you have for flowers and trees and books and science;
Is it overrated? It is not. It is just you…….”
“Stop!” – Monika tried to grab the arm of the man but she couldn’t find
him in the prevailing darkness.
“Monika there are people who still love you. Your mom and dad included.
I am not the only one. I am just your personified imagination. I will always
love you as long as you love yourself.”
“I said to stop it!”
“Monika! I love you but you need to understand that it is you who is
overrating love and not love in general. Love is not so complex. It is not hard
either. You just need to make yourself believe it. You will be happier. Believe
in me………..” -the voice slowly faded away.
In a moment of panic, Monika turned the lights on. But there was no one
to be seen. The apartment was empty as ever. She flopped down to the ground.
Her mind was juggling trains of emotions. She bent down to lay her head on her
knees while her vision was all cloudy.
Love, is a feeling, a state, an emotion, a necessity. It was never meant
to be questioned. But Monika did because she lacked the warmth of love in her
perspective. Love is never overrated to the ones who love or have been loved. Even
the ones shouting and screaming, “Love is overrated” know that it is not. Otherwise,
they wouldn’t have sought “Love”. It is only their failure to achieve their
unrealistic view of love that they think love is overrated. Love is simple and
flowy and spontaneous and maybe a bit mysterious but it is not and can never be
a group of jargon bundled together that can be decoded only by a certain group
of individuals.
********
---------Shoiloboha
