ANOTHER ROOM UNLOCKED!

 A rather humid Monday morning, and there she was reclining in her favourite armchair. A wavering wind stroked the strands of her unusually entangled braids. She had woken up more tired than usual. The blazing equatorial sun that made its way through the half-open window left her feeling even more exhausted. 

Skimming through an article about lost friendships and enmeshed relationships, made her think about her own long-lost friends. With every other misfortune, she also had the tainted honour of being the ‘estranged friend’ within her friend circle. This she thought was the inevitable consequence of a virtually detached Gen Z life, for the lack of possessing the good old Instagram deprives you of forging and maintaining relationships. 

She got hold of the telephone, which had been redundant for the past few years and could hold the position of a rare antiquity in the next few to come. She’d somehow managed her mother from giving it away for the uncanny fancy she possessed for conversations over telephones. 

She carefully dialled the number; a few rings and the owner, her virtually 'relevant and active' friend picked up the call. After a few casual exchanges, she hung up not before reminding her to check an exciting message she’d just sent. 

She looked up the message and with a serious air seemed to be more invested in it evident by her posture which had changed from casual. Now, she was sitting erect with her mobile close to her bosom and her head hung low to investigate every iota of information she could grasp. Her dark sunken eyes seemed fixed on it.

Love, an unsavoury aspiration for her, was seldom discussed in her own writings which were mostly about mundane affairs. It never appeared to her that something so arduously expressed and explored by thousands already should be touched upon by a novice being still unaware of the seemingly heavenly experience. 

A device that was most deemed boring with few pictures and many quotations, vague philosophies and political ideologies had suddenly become resplendent with coveted images. 

He was just the same as he was three years ago when she had last caught a glimpse of him; his disagreeable countenance and demeanour, his scuffed hair and the silver chain around his neck. She was bemused how anyone let alone she could notice the niceties of a being she has never once talked to.

A picture of him in a grey tuxedo and another in a black sweatshirt, she swiped quickly not wanting to gaze at it for too long. He was perhaps his happiest in the next series of images.

He was next to someone who he had written was the epitome and earthly definition of the ‘ideal lover’. And there the adorable beauty was tall, slender cradled by his heart in every frame. Her short tresses were unkempt but something about it was conspicuous. She looked gracious and elegant even with an otherwise unflattering t-shirt or in a lace corset top. The very short montage he’d made had them lying down in a heap of grass and reading a novel, trekking through the wilderness, playing in the rain and everything a mortal could desire for. Another image showed them in a leather jacket somewhere in a city square in New York, lost in each other. Looking ethereal in an ombre lehenga in the busy Delhi streets, he looked transfixed in her arresting beauty in another candid capture. 

He’d written long verses for her, where even innocuous expressions seemed to suggest artistic beauty. He went on to describe their perennial and unconditional love for each other. The long note ended with a promise he hoped to relish for the rest of his life to continue finding a million more reasons to fall in love with her again every day.

She’d never read something quite like this. While she could still point out minor errors in punctuation and inaccurate usage of expressions, she still felt diminished at some level. His elaborate descriptions of his love seemed like a homage to the sorted divinities than an obligatory credo in new-age relationships. 

The rest of her day passed in its usual swiftness. As she lay down in bed, she felt a sensation she had been fortunate not to have experienced in the past months; a tingling sensation all over her body along with her legs beginning to slightly tremble. With her breathing becoming gradually heavy and the heat steadily building in her eyes, she quickly ascertained that her saviours were right beside her on the bedside table to help her. With that strength, she shut her eyes tight waiting for sleep to embrace her.

She slept on without realizing the effect of an epiphany or of unrequited love. She had never loved. Never, indeed. This was perhaps no more than an unrealized emotion she is yet to attribute definitions in the forthcoming days. She would call it a billion other things but love. Love could be, for people like her an unsavoury realization too. Or was this the final catharsis for cure?

The sunken-eyed girl slept covered in her blanket and the palm of her left hand over a strip of unused medicine beside her, on the bedside table.