A moment

The world stood still around me. I am in this small red telephone booth trying to get through the busy lines. It has been a year since I have talked with my family. Now I’m here in this big city alone. I’m here …in the middle of nowhere. I’m here with my own reasons which I myself had invented to runaway from my fears of family love and kinship. Now I’m a total stranger to this land and so is this land to me. But today I have to call him. I punched in the numbers and waited for the line to get through, to reach across all those miles between us. The phone buzzed in my ears. The buzz was getting more and more irritating. I was lost in a time where the flowers were always in bloom and when the sun was always bright, when I found happiness in the small things of life when I found love and perfection in my life. It was like the dusty pages of some old note book. Something that is legible once you clean the dust off it.

I had forgotten those days for a while. It was what I had willingly done. I was in a home where I had two people I barely recognized as my parents. They were rich and that’s all what I knew about them. Let me put it this way they had their way and I had mine. Years passed and I grew up welcoming my youth gracefully. It was then that I started to feel lonely, a feeling that has not gone and was my closest friend. I would lose myself in some old stories or some good music but I seldom talked with my parents. It was at that time that I found myself being handed over to a man. They called it wedding but I just stared at his face wondering who he was, what he was and what all this meant to me. Well what did all that mean to me…Nothing!! I started my life in a new place with new people and a stranger? I could not accept it. Whenever he was close to me so were my suspicions. I could not let go of my ego or my complex or my fears. Me who had gone through my life independent and alone certainly did not admire the new found company. He used to tell me that he loved me but it all meant rubbish to me. But somehow I learned to love from him. I started to care about him. But once I found him with another woman and soon did I find the streets of this big city comforting and I got a job and all those which I had once interpreted as freedom. I left the memories my feelings behind. I hated human race and clasped my loneliness tightly. But somewhere I knew I was wrong. I knew he was not to blame. I never told him that I love him. I never was a wife to him…neither mentally nor physically There was something in my mind that told me that I had left my life a long way back. I used to dream of him; sometimes I used to call his name. But accepting it was tough. I did not. I let it go. I guess. Once I got his letter apologizing and asking me to join him. He was lonely and desperate .He loved me that is what the letter said. But I did not. I did not want to go because I thought he was a liar and the lies were what I hated. But I hardly recognized that I was living a lie.

Last day he called and apologized to me but told him that I hated him and that I would better be dead than be with him. The night seemed to stand still. I knew I wanted him and his love. I knew he loved me and was desperate for me. If he had one last wish I knew it would be me. I knew I was wrong and I could feel the pain of regret and remorse when the acceptance of my wrongs cut through me. Tears flowed from my eyes .I sat there like a statue in the moonlight with no one to turn to and nothing to hold on to. Them I realized that I had to reach him. I had to apologize and I had to get to him and that is why I’m here in this telephone booth trying the line again and again. But it seems to be really busy. I don’t understand why. It’s been quite a while. I punched in the numbers and this time I could hear the phone ring. Someone attended the call. I asked for him. The voice was throaty and not clear. But I got enough to understand what he had said. I can feel the tears stinging my eyes. I clutched the phone tight till my knuckles turned white. I clasped it close to my chest and tears flowed and my heart screamed because yesterday night I had lost a moment …a moment with which I lost my life and its happiness… a moment that has made me alone… all alone!