The lost soulmate (Part 1)

On all those nights when she laid in an empty bed and those nights when she got up and got dressed and left the guy’s place after a random sex, her heart cried…

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It was that wonderful age of infatuation those sweet teens when Farah and Sachin met in a yahoo chat room.

It was those days when cyber chat was the most fun thing for young teens in India. Delhi had Rs.10/- per hour cyber cafe sprung up all over the city. Kids used to spend their pocket money to enter one of those tiny little cafes and be teleported to a world where there was no class, caste, race or religion, where alpha-numeric combination coupled with little bit of wit and flirting used to be the only identity the young hearts had.

Farah was ‘sweetgirl15’ and Sachin was ‘moonboy’. It was an instant connection albeit virtually. As if their souls had entered the computer screen, traveled through the web to reach each other and became one. Phone numbers were exchanged the same day. Within a week they met discreetly in Deer Park.

That was their first date. He had brought a rose for her which she could guess was plucked from the Rose Garden on the way. But to her it was the most precious thing anybody had ever got for her. “Wow, this is just like in the movies,” she thought. When he held out that rose she heard bells ringing somewhere and when her fingers touched his while receiving the rose there were fireworks in her mind and body.

At 15 they both were too young and innocent to even notice that she was a Muslim and him a Hindu, a Bharadwaj Brahmin at that.

Time flew by riding the wings of romance – sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, sometimes cold and sometimes passionate.

Child hood lovers don’t grow up together they grow upon each other. Each learns to become a little bit of what the other wants him or her to be.

Sachin grew up to be a strong headed earthly man. He didn’t believe in fairy tales of perfect love. ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge’ was a crappy movie he thought. “There is just no good reason behind putting your parents through difficult times for the sake of some silly feelings you call love. And all that efforts of impressing the girl’s father is not worth it,” he would say. Needless to say he was not like the conventional boyfriends.

Farah grew up to be an idealist and a dreamer when it came to romance and a pragmatic when it came to her career and studies. She used to love the sweet nothings couples say or do to each other. She wished deeply that Sachin was at least a bit like the conventional boyfriends, she wished he had got her a gift, no matter howsoever small, every time they met. She wished he told her how much he loved her every time they made love. But he never said it and she didn’t either because he never asked.

I said child hood lovers become a bit like what their lovers want them to be when they grow together. So through their growing days, what Farah learnt was to love Sachin unconditionally and what he learnt was loyalty. She loved him unconditionally in sickness and health. She always knew even if he never said it that there was not an iota of doubt that he did love her.

Sachin wasn’t sure if he loved her or not, he was not even sure if there was anything called love which is worth all the efforts they show in movies and books but this much he knew that there would be no other woman he would ever want to be with but Faraah. He didn’t even want to look at any other girl but her. His loyalty towards her was something his friends swore by.

Ten years down the line it was time to take the next logical step for the relationship. Sachin was dreading this day for quite some time. He didn’t know how to tell Farah that he was scared his family will never let him marry a Muslim girl. Farah didn’t have any such fear because she belonged to a very liberal family which had already witnessed inter religious marriages.

(To be continued)

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