Understatment

I was staring mindlessly at the white, stretched screen that was supposed to be the center of my undivided attention at that time. I couldn’t concentrate. My blunt lead pencil was caressing my fingers, twirling from one to the other. I was looking at the lecturer; apparently with a troubled expression. A second later her eyes strayed over me with hopelessness, she knew I wasn’t attending to the subject she was strenuously addressing. I nodded back slightly with assurance. I lied. I had been hearing what she was saying, but I wasn’t listening to it. I sighed and took off the black frame spectacles that were resting on my eyes. I was tired. Understatement. No, I was terribly fatigued and drained out. I hadn’t an ounce of sleep since the past three days, and my mind seemed empty. I wondered if I could hear the clatter if I threw something in.
I looked wistfully out the window of the darkened room, where the graceful pines were swaying in ecstasy, and the wind was teasing their needle like pointing leaves.
I had been in this heaven for a month now. I am a writer, and was in one of the most beautiful hill stations in my country, attending a conference. There were another 50 people like me present in the lavish and magnificently decorated hall of the hotel where the conference had been arranged. Perhaps there were many more thousands in the world somewhere. Maybe some of them were right now, attending to something similar, who knows.
The breath taking beauty, the soul touching mist, the magically enchanted aura of this vicinity had indeed prodded in the depths of my soul, to reawake my magic with words.
I had written, after many years, and I had been writing since the past three days. I had forgotten, for these blessed three days, all material information pertaining to me; who where when why. I was just an entity, and I wrote my heart and soul out in the blackened pages that now lied in my desk drawer, and this once again reminded me why I had stopped writing in the first place. The memories came rushing to me, like an avalanche roaring its way down the peak; they almost froze my mind for a second.
I could no longer bear the dark room I was in. I got up, making my way through the rows of people sitting there, muttering apologies.
I pushed open the door out of the room as hard as I could, and another one opened in my mind.

I had waited for him;
For Thirteen years I struggled strenuously to forget him, erase him from my memory, and obliterate his existence from my universe. I had wakened many nights, reliving my memories. I had, in vain, thought that reliving them once might ease me in banishing him from my soul where he had been at home for as long as I can remember myself being the same.
I was wrong. He had embedded himself somewhere in me and I was unable to demolish him, he had erected himself so strong. I had loved him. Understatement. I had worshipped him, for thirteen years he had been my only loss and my only gain, I gave him everything any woman in the world could offer him; Love, respect, affection, satisfaction, purity, oneness, loyalty, faith, Fate, happiness…everything worth achieving.
And here I was, with an empty heart and an empty mind. Nothing seemed familiar. No DejaVu. The clouds, the fog, the skies, the peaks, nothing seemed as if it had ever known me. Everything and everyone was a perfect stranger. Only he and I remained familiar.
Just recognizable.
And then I saw him. I saw him at the same conference that I was attending. At first I couldn’t believe the sight that my eyes were committing to my soul…a glimpse of him again was barely credible for my soul that had almost perished in the long, cold wait for him. He was as alive as I could remember him, his face fresh and his grandeur still intact; he was still so very oblivious of his own charm and allure, just like he had always been. His eyes met mine for a split second and I saw a hint of recognition in them. The very next moment he broke the contact that had been holding me on to a fringe of hope; he continued chatting to the chief guest. I sighed. Maybe this was all a very bad dream. Maybe I’ll wake up in a minute or two and find myself alone again. I tried to jerk my senses. It was like walking in a misty dream. I was in a state of ecstasy, like a writer who sees his wildest fantasies come to life. And yet there was a piercing pain at the core of my heart, where I had once enthroned him as future king. I turned away, trying to camouflage myself into the enchanting beauty around me.
“Alia, is that you?” he questioned my existence. “I don’t believe it. You haven’t changed a bit have you?” he smiled.
And I felt another torturous memory knocking at my heart. His smile had been my biggest weakness. He made the entire cosmos shine with bliss when he smiled.
I tried feebly to give him mine, apparently failing to do so.
‘“Aren’t you glad to see me?” he seemed unsure.
“No of course not, it’s a pleasant surprise…how’re you?” I managed to utter at last.
“I’m well, just planning on new stuff, going to get married in a week’s time, you’re still writing I suppose ?” he asked, with confidence in his voice.
I looked at him dumbstruck, and then it hit me.
He had moved on, knowing I would still linger, no matter after so much of time, at the same place where he had abandoned me.
He knew I would stay stagnant, maybe even wait for him endlessly if I had to.
‘How convenient,’ I thought to myself, while my eyes strayed over his Greek-god features,
‘Leaving me in the shattered arena of all that I had dreamt of, and moving on himself.’
‘How very convenient,’ He had been the prince who had betrayed his kingdom, yet he expected his court to stay loyal to him, fight for him.
I turned away from him.
“I’m sorry, I have to be somewhere right now.” I said firmly.
He looked taken aback.
He hadn’t expected a ‘no’ from me. I had, till I worshipped him, thought of that as a sin too. But his idol had been crushed at last.
“Why?” he spluttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Why can’t you stay for a bit??” he asked, with firmness in his voice, as if demanding my presence.
“Because,” I looked into his eyes, locking them with mine “I am no longer waiting for you.”
I walked away. Understatement. I threw him out of my world.