Memories of Love

She was wearing a white dress with floral prints of at least 3 shades of blue when she came close to me, very close, and said, her breath caressing my ears – “The best anti-ageing solution is someone else’s memory.” It took me some time to absorb the statement partly because I was completely enchanted by her beauty & the heart note of the perfume she wore (which reminded me of the coniferous trees of Himalayas) and partly because I somehow believed that what she had just said held a much deeper meaning than what appeared on the surface.

-What do you mean?
-Fifteen years down the lane when, and if you remember this evening with a not-so-pretty girl, would she have aged?
-Of course I’ll remember. And no, you wouldn’t have aged.
-Exactly. That is why I never use facial cosmetics.

and she kissed me.

-I am just making an effort to bring credibility to your promise of remembering me at this particular moment.

and she winked.

Obviously, it was her modesty to add the ‘not-so-pretty’ adjective for self-referencing but if I were to rank the girls I’ve been in relationships with, she was bang on the top. Oh God, she was beautiful.

—

We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year.

—

The only thing that I looked forward to on certain mornings was her visit to my room. Otherwise, the hospital was, to be true and for the lack of a better word, fucked up shit-hole. Add to it the blast of weird mutated white cells in my blood. The doctors referred to my disease as lymphoblastic leukemia – a cancer of the blood which truly and actually may and with all probability will kill me – because one day my white cells decided to evolve and perfect themselves and succeeded. So now they grew and adapted faster. But amidst these intricacies of complexities in my body, I still loved and cared for her. When she came and sat beside me, I used to forget that I had a big reason to be sad and instead smiled. Sometimes we talked for so long that I used to fall asleep in between and she never complained. My doctors certainly did, especially that nurse. I would get tired with all the speaking, she used to say to her and in my mind I used to shout at the top of my voice – “So what! You bitch. Leave us alone, you intruder of privacy.” But I never said it because she was doing her job and earning money out of separating sick from the ones who cared, and in our case, two people totally in love. Bitch.

Sometimes, when I used to wake up from one of those mid-conversation sleeps, I used to find her sitting by the chair, sleeping with her head down by my side. She slept like a baby. And I used to feel rejuvenated, ready to take on the world to avoid even a scratch on her arm. She was mine.

—

I used to work at a book-store on a part time basis throughout the week during my college days so that I could have the finances to go and meet her. When she learnt about it, she was angry. She cried and she was infuriated. That was the angriest I have seen her. And then I came to know that she has been working too as an intern in various start-ups, but I said nothing. I think when she got angry, that was love in its purest form and when I didn’t say anything – that was love too, in the purest form.

—

We held hands when I last met her. She wore, at my request, the exact same perfume whose heart note reminded me of Himalayan coniferous forests. The top note was mesmerizing too and if I were to break-up the ingredients I can say with utmost confidence that there was vanilla in it. I had decided to break up with her. Now when I think about it, I find it utterly funny that I – a person on his deathbed – decided to break up with her – a person of highest qualities that define a perfect human being, and pretty. Currently I am in no mood to explain to you what all we talked but I can tell you for sure that there were lots of tears that fell from her cheeks to mine. There was a show on television in which an old man was on his knees and was singing the usual ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ to a baby girl not more than 2 years old.

I couldn’t kneel down so I asked her to come closer to me and put her right ear near my lips. She did. And I sang

We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year.

Here too was a man old enough to die, singing the song to his baby girl.

—
-I am pretty sure that once I die, you will never forget me.
-How can you be so sure?
-Do you remember what you had once said about the best anti-ageing solution?
-Yes.
-I believe the best place to live forever is someone else’s memory.

-I am someone else? (she winked)
-Haah, you got me!
-Then? How can you be so sure that I will never forget you?
-Because you love me.