On my wedding night, my father placed his hand on my head, without looking into my eyes and said, “I will pray for your happiness always. Remember that your smile is my strength and every drop of tear in your eyes burns my heart.” I just smiled, looked up at him and said, “All my smiles bid me a goodbye the day I saw him walking away from our house, without even looking back to see me for the last time, walking away from my life forever.”
Today, even after so many years, I still remember your eyes looking at me whenever I smiled, while adoring you talk to me, adoring you tell me everything that happened during your day. You stopped in the middle of your sentence, blushed and said, “This is the smile which keeps me going through the day, which makes me long to come and meet you every evening. This is the smile which melts all my stress in no time and this is the smile I live for.” And the day you left, I could never smile the same way again. Because it was only you who I smiled for and it will be only you who always will have the right to this smile. Nobody and nobody else.
I still remember how you held my hand tightly while crossing the road and how safe I felt in the warmth your hand. I still remember how excitedly I got ready whenever you came to meet me. And today no matter wherever I have to go, whoever I have to meet, I never feel the same passion nor the desire to look good because I know in the crowd of innumerable people, my eyes will wander to find only yours, looking at me in awe, like they always did. It breaks my heart to understand that now never will I be able to find them and never will they ever see me.
And then I wonder even after these many years of separation, do you still keep my picture in your wallet? Do you still miss my hand while crossing the road holding somebody else’s? Do you still long for my smile after the long day you had at work? Do you still miss my silly little habits while we were together? Do you still miss our laughter, our meals that I cooked for you and our long walks? Or do you still feel the pain of me not being by your side? And do you still love me just like you always did? Because I still do. Every night before I go to sleep, I still think of every day I spent with you, every memory that we have makes my chest feel an incurable pain and thinking about all those days leaves my eyes full of tears. Even today..
Yes, it was only for a few months but we lived the best moments of our lives in them because fate chose not to grant us any more of them. I still curse this fate and I still question it what difference would it have made if my name added a ‘Khan’ to it? What difference would it make if both of us read Namaz together after lighting a diya in the temple? What difference would it make if I learnt somethings from your religion and you learnt some from mine? What difference would it make if all of them could come together with the both of us for Eid and for Diwali?
And then I rest my heart to believe that someday, somewhere when we won’t need to think of our religions before falling in love, I will come back to you again. Someday somewhere when the difference in our names won’t matter anymore, I’ll place my hand again in yours but this time with a promise of never letting go of it. Someday somewhere I will again drape your favorite saree applying the kajal you liked in my eyes so you could look at me the same way once again, with the eyes that I searched for wherever I went, the gaze which nobody else is permitted. Someday Somewhere we will meet again, to fall in love once again or rather to complete this lovestory of ours. But till then I will wait to breathe my last to run and fall back in your arms in some other life.. Because in this life fate ripped us apart for a reason that our love never could understand.
From a girl who could never be yours and could never stop loving you either.
