Lessons in Love

(Co-author: Nikita Agarwal)

Have you seen the morning sun emanating briskly its rays on a spring morning? Whenever I met her, she felt the same. That’s the best analogy I could come up with not because she was no better than this (believe me when I say this, she was the best person I had ever met) but because the features shared by them were almost equivalent – bright, warm, emanating briskly the rays of optimism and mirth. I once told her,

Now I know I tread ahead
Immense luster of virile exuberance
You ordain upon

-What does this mean?

-It means that now I can live confidently because you bring unbeatable levels of happiness with you.

-Really?

And she looked intently in my eyes like she always did, as if in my eyes she found fragments of herself she always seemed to look for. I had an immense urge to say that I loved her but I didn’t want to break the flow of her thoughts.

…..

I work in a bookstore I own. Many have discarded me as a senseless idiot for opening a brick-and-mortar store in the era of electronic shopping. I have also been termed as an unreasonable loser to have opened a bookstore after earning three degrees ranging from Computer Science and Business Management to Economics and two years of work experience as a Marketing Executive. She loved books, non-fiction though, and I loved her. The first time I gifted her a book, she tried hard to read but couldn’t finish it. I had gotten very angry at her for not doing so. How could she not finish a book that I so fondly selected and gifted her? I remember I was 19 then.

Two years later when I was helping her to move out of her apartment, I stumbled upon the same and asked if I could borrow it because anyway she wasn’t going to read it. So I did. And I couldn’t finish it. It was terrible to the core. I couldn’t even complete 50 pages. With frustration, when I flipped the pages of the book, I found some red colored markings. It was the 234th page. Two lines were underlined and some words were written on the right margin of the page.

Line 1 – Therefore, he, in his utmost arrogance, picked up the vase and threw it out of the window.
Line 2 – Wiping her tears, she went out and picked up the fake flowers that were there in the vase. Vase, she wanted to pick up too but it was shattered. She remembered when they, together, had bought the vase.

On the side, in her handwriting, was written – ‘I should finish this novel.’

She defined what it meant to love someone. In her everyday activities, she displayed what love actually was. I had always thought that gifting a book is a true display of love. Gift-wrap it, write a cute message on the small card, tie a ribbon around it and voila, your job of showing how much you love her is done. No. She told me what love is. Love is reading almost 80% of a pathetic fiction novel, when you strictly prefer high quality non-fiction, just because it has been gifted. Love is to find meanings in mediocre lines of the same book, think of the one who gifted it and promise oneself to finish it. Love is doing all of it without letting the person know.

…..

So I own a bookstore. My parents feel that I have let them down. For all the effort and money and hope they invested in me since childhood, this is what I give them in return. A bookstore. She never questioned it. She knew I loved books. I remember her saying

-You know we are in a long-distance relationship?

-Yes. So?

-I need to talk to you everyday.

-Yes, sweetheart. Haven’t we been talking daily for the last five years?

-I want you to know one thing.

-What is it?

-I need to talk to you everyday. But if you are into a book, just let me know. I can live without talking to you for days knowing that you are reading something that you love.

And she did. When I was reading To Sir, With Love or To Kill A Mockingbird or In The Light Of What We Know or Norwegian Wood, she somehow sensed, over the phone itself, that these books would turn out to be my favorites. I clearly remember while reading the sequence involving narrator’s conversation with his father in In The Light Of What We Know, which by the way is one of the most exquisite prose pieces I have ever read, she called me up and

-Hello. What are you doing?
-I am reading.
-The same fat book?
-Yes.
-Okay. I just called to say Good Night. I love you.
-I love you too.
-Sweet Dreams.
-Sweet Dreams.

I knew she never slept at 9. She didn’t call to just wish me Good Night. She taught me that love is letting the other person do what he loves to do. So, she never questioned my decision to run a bookstore. The only conversation we had around it started with her asking,

-Why do you want to quit? And that too for a bookstore?

-Because I love books. I would love to run a bookstore that I have always dreamed of visiting.

-How would you answer the umpteen questions that people would ask?

-People suck in general. They tend to question every non-conforming decision you take. When I went for Business Management, people including the interviewers asked me how it connected with my undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in Computer Science. Obviously, I had some answers prepared for them but the real reason is I was pretty sure I did not want to pursue a career there.

-Okay.

-People who think that their one decision at one point of time should define their whole course of life are morons in truest sense. I happened to score high and get into Computer Science. So what? That becomes my field for life?

-Obviously not.

-After Business Management, I applied for an MS in Economics. I did so because I wanted to further explore the field which I got exposed to during my MBA. People get amazed by the fact that I majored in Economics in a B-School. You know what, fuck them.

-Why Marketing?

-Because I wanted to know what all goes in there.

-That’s it?

-That’s it.

-And now a bookstore?

-Yes, a bookstore.

-Can I be a partner?

-You’ll have to let go of your finance career.

-I can work on weekends.

-Okay.

-Okay.

And she leaned forward and kissed me. She sensed tears in my eyes because, while kissing me, she wiped my closed eyes gently with her thumb. Love is to understand your partner and share the confidence for something he or she loves.

…..

-People tend to adapt very quickly to their current conditions.

-What do you mean?

-If you are at home, you tend to stay at home because you adapt to lying lazily and doing nothing and if you have been traveling a lot, you tend to travel more.

-A body in motion will remain in motion and a body at rest will remain at rest, unless acted upon by an external force.

-Exactly, Newton’s First Law. (She smiled, and continued) I am excluding sex here (And laughed)

I frowned on the phone. We had been talking for half an hour. Somewhere in between, I realized how long we have come together in the relationship. We started off at a slow pace and remained at that pace. The third force that got applied was when she gifted me a camera, my first camera (First was when I proposed and she accepted, second was when we kissed). I knew she didn’t earn much then and safely assumed that she saved on her pocket money. I got angry at her for buying such an expensive camera for me. She just kept smiling.

One year later she asked me to print her bank statement of the last two years for some accounting purpose. I did so. She had been saving her stipend for one year and then there was a debit of the amount equivalent to the price of my camera. I did not tell her anything. I clearly remembered her say

-I know how much you love photography. Take this and learn.

Love means never having to let the partner worry about pursuing his interests.
I called her up and just said Sorry. And she,

-Why?

-For everything. (My voice trembled)

-Shhh. I’ve read very few fictions, but one line I remember – Love means never having to say you are sorry.

…..

Today, when I sit back and think about all of it I hear grinding noises from the kitchen.

-What’s for the dinner?

-The maid must have cooked something.

-What are you cooking then?

-It’s been quite a long time since we’ve had Gajar ka Halwa. I thought I should prepare it today.

I go to her. Hug her from the back and

-You go and relax. Let me cook.

-You don’t even know how a turnip is different from an onion. Idiot. Let me do my work.

-What the fuck. I summon an order for you to go and first change.

-Okay. Okay.

There she goes. Now let me open the website and cook a good dessert for her. Love also means to learn things, always. To keep learning.