Crossing the Mirage:Passing Through Youth

“How wrenching could be that feeling?” said Chandra having got a clear picture of it all by then.

"It was of my own making for I failed to make her see the depth of my love for her,‟ said Sathya remorsefully. "But, given my nature, I got on with my life, and the whole thing went into the backyard of my memory. Anyway, we remained friends, though we never talked about our past and it was my argument that made her father to relent in his objection to her marrying that guy. Since my parents too shifted out of Kakinada shortly thereafter, I lost contact with her altogether. As we do have some common friends, now I'm in the lookout for them. Oh, how all these years I treated that as a missed opportunity at the best, and a failed affair at the worst. Never did I realize that I was the villain of her life. But, that night, in the hour of my ruin, while visualizing the source of her trauma I had a measure of mine own meanness.”

“What about her pain?” Chandra couldn't help but say. “Could you ever visualize it?”

“Why, it's my grasp of her pain that's the source of my shame,‟ said Sathya holding back his tears that had filled his eyes by then. "If only I was honest to tell her about my infatuation for my classmate, she wouldn't have nursed false hopes on me, would she have? If only she knew about my love for another, what if it's a calf-love, she wouldn't have hoped to convert my tentative interest in her into an abiding love for her, and had I been truthful, she would've reined in her heart to keep her nascent love a sweet memory of youth to be cherished on occasion in life. And what happened instead? I'd furthered her love to fuel her passion, only to wound her psyche in the end! And then, how I failed to give her the picture of my own love when I really started loving her genuinely. Oh, how I've wronged her! What did I give her in return for her love? It dawned on me too that while I was patting myself for so long for being smart, she found herself smarting from my duplicity. Oh how distressing it is to think of that now and am I not ashamed of myself for being so crass with her. My inexperience of life is no excuse really. The fact that I could be so insensitive for that long, about something so apparent, makes me appear mean in my own eyes. As I fell in my own esteem, I crave for her pardon and though she got it even with me in the end, I think, it‟s no consolation for her for what all she had suffered at my hands.”