Crossing the Mirage:Passing Through Youth

“Did you tell her about your first impressions of her?” asked Chandra.

“I haven't, but I don't know whether Gopal told her,” said Sathya applying his mind. “After all, when it comes to women, men have their petty jealousies and tentative designs. Now I wonder whether her ill-treatment of me had anything to do with her hurt vanity! Anyway, how does that matter now?”

“Why, is it quits or what?”

“No, my love is in the bind as her fatal attraction is holding me in a vice-like grip,” said Sathya having a sip as if to extricate himself from that. “Now I realize, if love makes you blind, passion robs you of your reason as well. Add sentiment to that and you would have a deadly mix that afflicts life itself. That's what happened in my case. As I told you, I didn't find her physically attractive, to start with, that is. But as her intellectual qualities stimulated my romanticism, I found her irresistibly attractive, what with her flirting fueling my desire further. Though I began craving for our romantic union, somehow, I was sure it was not love. Neither was it lust. I was conscious about that when I went to her house that evening but our interaction seemed to have affected my ethos itself. I fell in love with her then and there and I was aware of that when I left her. I was familiar with the changes love brings in the heart for I loved and lost more than once before. When I met her at the office the next day, I experienced the joy of seeing a beloved. But she told her tale of woes, in bits and pieces that too after much of prompting and that exorcised into pitying her.‟

“What's her story like?” asked Chandra seeing the similarities in their love stories.

“To make a long story short,” said Sathya enigmatically, “she and her younger sister were born to the old man's second wife. Cut up with their father for his second marriage when their mother was still alive, her stepbrothers severed all ties with them. So, after his retirement, as her father came to depend upon her earnings, he was averse to her marriage. What's worse, he made a nuisance of himself by throwing tantrums at trivial matters. The only silver lining in her life is her uncle, an Appraiser in the Customs Department in Cal. It's he who got her this job and others before it. Well, I'd seen him a couple of times in our office.”

“I found her story moving?” said Sathya gulping from his glass, “and feeling she was a jewel-in-the-gutter, I was seized with an urge to wash her afresh with my love. So, on an impulse, I proposed to her but she was not prepared to accept though she said she couldn't have hoped for a better man for husband. Well, to shore up my sagging morale, she blamed her misfortune for she couldn't take a hand like mine. When I said even after our marriage, she can support her family; she said her predicament stemmed from a different ailment, and being pressed, she came up with her own love story.”