Can Love Happen Twice?

  ‘Hmm … What about your flat which was under construction?’ he asked.

  ‘I will soon be getting possession of it and, most probably before we leave India, I will be renting it out.’

  ‘And what about your parents, Ravin?’

  ‘They will join me. I am yet to talk to them, but I believe I will be able to convince them.’

  ‘Hmm … I would be very happy if that happens, Ravin. But is Simar aware of this?’

  ‘Aware of what, Uncle?’

  ‘That your family will be joining you?’

  ‘I am not sure if we have explicitly talked about this, but, more or less, she should be aware of this. But why are you asking this question?’

  Her dad took a deep breath before he spoke again,

  ‘Ravin, I know that Simar insisted you move to Belgium, but when she asked you to do this, did you try to find out why she wanted to do so?’

  ‘I asked her and whatever reasons she gave me appeared unreasonable to me. Maybe the way she dreams of her future life …’ I left my answer incomplete.

  Simar’s dad waited for a while, allowing me to speak further. But I didn’t. And very calmly, he spoke again.

  ‘Ravin, if you remember when you were here I did mention to you that, for a successful life together, it is of the utmost importance for life partners to be on the same page.’ He continued further, saying, ‘I had told you that Simar is a pampered kid. At times she is very demanding and I am sure by now you would have realized it. The other thing is that Simar has always wanted her own space which she relates to her independence. This is something she is very particular about. The hard fact is that she wanted to settle down abroad because she wanted to live with just you.’

  ‘What do you mean just me?’ I asked.

  ‘Talk to her about this. You really should.’

  As her dad spoke further, I was beginning to understand Simar’s actual reasons to move out of India. She didn’t want to live with my family but wanted just the two of us to live together. A series of Simar’s dreams flashed in my mind and I recalled that none had a vision of living with my parents. She had never mentioned anything about us living with them. On the contrary, I recalled always saying to her that we will take care of our parents and be under their blessings. She knew how much I valued family and relations. She also knew that my parents wouldn’t be willing to move out of India.

  As the blurred image of Simar’s wishes was getting clear in front of my eyes I was starting to feel uncomfortable. I didn’t have much to say. I simply kept listening to her dad who was merging the broken links to explain to me what I hadn’t fully understood till now.

  ‘Simar has done well in life. We have always shown her the path on which she should walk ahead in life. Most of the time she has accepted the path, but then she has preferred to walk alone. She has always preferred staying in hostels, even when she was here in Delhi. And we accepted her wishes, knowing that she is not ruining her life in any way. She is an independent person and wants to live her life in her own way. And I don’t see a problem in it as long as she is able to live in prosperity. My only problem is that she keeps such thoughts close to her heart and I suppose she wouldn’t have shared this with you. While I move my entire business to Belgium, Simar wants you to join my business. As a matter of fact, she wants both you and herself to take this business ahead. She wants you to leave your job.’

  I was in the dark when it came to many of the stories which Simar’s dad was sharing with me that day over the call. If all he had been saying was correct, then it was shocking for me to find out the truth this way. I felt this sudden urge to call Simar and make her clarify everything to me.

  The tone in which her dad had spoken was compelling. It was very considerate and good of him to share those facts with me. Somewhere I realized that even Simar’s family had adjusted to a life as per Simar’s wishes. Before I hung up, having listened to a few more facts about Simar, I asked her dad why they didn’t simply push and convince her the way she would convince them. His reply was crisp.

  ‘I wish we had done that earlier on in her life. It’s too late now. Not that she wouldn’t agree to do what we say, but that she would end up crying each and every day. I know her. And as a father it is difficult to see your child that way. It has happened umpteen times in the past.’

  The entire conversation I had that evening with Simar’s father left me wondering. In the first go, I wanted to call Simar, but then later I decided against doing so. I thought it was better to prepare myself before I got to hear from Simar whether all that I had heard was right. How could she? And why would she? I kept thinking to myself the whole night. Sleep was miles away from me—and so was Simar. I wanted to stop her, explain to her before she went too far away—so far that it would be impossible to get her back. I kept turning in my bed the whole night.

  In the morning I went to make some tea for myself. I had a severe headache. I was still going over the entire conversation from the evening before. I kept watching the flame on the stove.

  The words ‘She doesn’t want to live with your family, but just you’ echoed in my head.

  ‘She wants you to come and join my business and live with us,’ her dad had said.

  As I stood absent-mindedly in my kitchen, staring into the blue flame, the tea boiled over in the vessel. I wanted to stop it from spilling over the rim but wasn’t able to do so. I wanted to stop a lot of things from spilling over. I was finding it difficult to do so.

  A sudden urge, a sudden frustration and a sudden suffocation—all seemed to be running through me all at once. I called up Simar.

  It was very early in the morning in Belgium. I knew I was going to wake her up from her sleep. But it didn’t bother me.

  Twenty-four

  It took her a while to shake off her deep sleep before she could make any sense of what I was saying. I told her to freshen up and call me back, and this is exactly what she did.

  Soon we were discussing the entire matter. In the initial minutes Simar didn’t give me a straight answer but when I probed her more by putting my questions in different words, I realized Simar’s father had been right in whatever he had said.

  ‘And I thought it was all over when I assured you of my plans of coming to Belgium.’

  We went into a debate.

  She became defensive and fired a range of questions at me for the very first time: ‘Will I be allowed to work and lead my life the way I am doing now? There can be chances that your mother would want me to be a homemaker!’; ‘Your family is quite religious and conservative. Will I get to wear anything and everything?’; ‘You had mentioned that we will have to look after your parents. There will be plenty of responsibilities and expectations. And I wish to spend the entire time with you!’; ‘There will be so many restrictions in a joint family. Will we still be able to go to late night parties?’

  And in the end she even had ready her own answer to all her questions: ‘I won’t be comfortable in a joint family, Ravin.’

  I wondered how merely living with my parents meant being part of a joint family. More importantly, I was taken aback by the range of insecurities that Simar had been carrying in herself all along. I was greatly disappointed with her understanding of the subject as well as her judgement on it, especially when she had arrived at these conclusions without even discussing them with me.

  When it was my turn to speak I was very careful, deciding not to be angry but to remain cool. I wanted to work on pacifying her insecurities as they weren’t right. My family and I were sure that Simar would be working after marriage. I wanted her to wear everything that she was wearing when she was with her own parents. I certainly wanted to take care of my parents because they were growing old. It is a responsibility which I believe every child should adhere to. But that in no way was going to make our life miserable. I understood the meaning of privacy and freedom but I only valued them when they were taken in a justified way—that is, not at the cost of one’s commitments. br />
  With every reason I gave Simar, I was sure that I meant whatever I said. But for some reason she wasn’t convinced. Her sixth sense was biased towards her own viewpoint, primarily because that is what she wanted and she valued her intuition more than my reasonable logic. The more reasonable I tried to be, the more unreasonable her questions became:

  ‘What if I will be asked to cook for everyone?’

  And to this, I answered, ‘Simar, if both of us will be working, then both of us will be tired by the end of the day; and if being a guy I don’t have the strength to work in the kitchen, how would I expect the same from a girl?’

  ‘But you do cook, Ravin. You were cooking for yourself after work in Belgium.’

  ‘Yes, because that was the need of the moment. I was all alone. Here in India we can afford maids to do the household chores. Why are you bothered that much?’

  The more I was trying to finalize our marriage, the more I was discovering layers of Simar’s latent expectations and fears. I felt as if a lot between us was changing. The days of our romance and laughter appeared to be very far back in the past. Our love story had entered a new phase of expectations, demands and debates.

  ‘No! Never! Don’t even of think of me leaving my parents.’

  ‘It’s not that I want you to leave your parents. I simply want an arrangement where the two of us live together and we visit them at regular intervals.’

  She made no sense. I started getting furious over all her nonsense.

  ‘And look at you, Simar! You wanted me to come and live with your family. How sick is that? You wanted me to join your dad in his business.’

  ‘That’s because you and I will have a great life. We will have our own business; we can live in a big house. Think of the luxury of life and the ease.’

  ‘What has happened to you, Simar? When I was in Belgium did you even bother about the small rented apartment I used to be in? Did you even care for a big house, a big car and a big lifestyle then?’

  ‘Ravz, I love you. But I also want to live a good life and have a grand lifestyle. And if both of us can get that, what’s the harm in it?’

  I paused for a while. I thought about what had happened so far and what was happening right at that moment. Since when did everything start changing, I wondered. Since the time I left Belgium and Simar had to live alone, I thought to myself. Maybe because that was the first time Simar was far away from me and this distance was making her reassess her priorities and think about what she actually wanted in life. Or maybe she started feeling differently once she was back in India when she had talked to her parents about all this or maybe when she visited my place.

  Something in me choked. Whatever we talked about was very unpleasant for me to hear, more so because it was Simar at the other end of the conversation. I was clueless. It was hard to believe if she was the same Simar whom I loved and cared for. She had changed.

  I was clear about what all she said and what all she didn’t say. For everything that was happening I finally had started answering my own questions.

  Simar came from a wealthy family. For a while she happened to fall in love with a guy who wasn’t as wealthy as her family was but was doing reasonably well in his life. Not that she wanted to live without me, but she wanted to be with me as well as cherish all her dreams. She had always visualized a great life with all sorts of luxuries. She didn’t want to compromise on that. Back in Gurgaon her family was well known and her parents had a great social network with politicians and businessmen. On the contrary, my parents hardly had any such reputation. If asked something in English, my parents most probably wouldn’t even understand the question, forget about being able to answer it fluently. That, surely, was in huge contrast to her family’s status and lifestyle. How then could Simar adjust with my family? My dad didn’t wear a tuxedo. He’d always worn a humble kurta–pyjama all his life. My family had a simple lifestyle, not that any of us had any issues with the modern Westernized lifestyle. While in our family my mom would cook, in Simar’s family they had the maids to cook and do all the work. Things were certainly different. But not so different that they would become a bottleneck, given the fact that I had always been clear with Simar about my life and my expectations. In spite of subtle differences nothing was going to prohibit Simar from living a life that she used to live so far. I lived in the same family and I had enjoyed all the freedom I wanted. And belonging to the same family I had imbibed the values and upbringing that made Simar fall in love with me. How could the same lifestyle go against her?

  Things kept deteriorating between us. I didn’t know where I was wrong and where Simar was right. But I still knew that we needed to work it all out. Simar’s exams were round the corner and hence we called a ceasefire on this subject. We took a break, so that she could concentrate on her studies and rethink everything once she was free.

  The only ray of hope had been when she spoke those final words: ‘Ravz, give me some time. Let me complete my exams, and with you I want to work on my fears and insecurities.’

  Uncertainties hovered over our fate. Time and again Simar mentioned that she knew I was right and that she would try her best to accept things, but reality was different from promises made in the throes of love. I knew things were going the other way and they were going fast. And I wanted to stop this change. I planned to take a break from my work and go to Belgium as soon as her exams finished. Simar still had a consulting project to work on after her final exams because of which she wouldn’t be able to immediately travel back to India after her final exams. I wanted to discuss things face-to-face with Simar and therefore I considered this a much-needed trip.

  But when things are against you, no matter what you do, they are actually against you. For some reason—call it Murphy’s law, I guess!—I got to know that Simar’s consulting project demanded her to visit Canada.

  ‘Believe me, Ravin, I had no idea that they will ask me to travel all the way to Canada. At the last moment the client changed their outsourcing plan.’

  It was a test of my patience. For various reasons it was no longer feasible to be together and discuss things face-to-face. I found that I started focusing less on my work and more on how to bridge the growing gap in our relationship while Simar was far more focused on her career than on working out our problems. I was still okay with that. I didn’t want her to play with her career.

  From her final exams that wait had now stretched to the end of her consulting project.

  ‘Two more months, Ravz!’ she had told me.

  But our emotions didn’t wait for that long a time. We ran through a spate of terrible moments. The vacuum I felt within was enormous. We fought and we missed each other, we cried and we held each other responsible. It was an undefined state we were in. At times we made wild love over the phone. When there is a vacuum, it feels as though a wild gush of wind—brutal and cold—runs in to fill up the space. But in the end we found ourselves at the same hurdle. We both were on the opposite side of a wide gap.

  Love, like life, is so insecure. It moves in our lives and occupies its sweet space in our hearts so easily. But it never guarantees that it will stay there forever. Probably that’s why it is so precious.

  Twenty-five

  The consulting project unfortunately stretched on for an additional three months, making it a total of five months. That was a long time. In our case, long enough to bring our relationship to the verge of falling apart. That’s the brutal truth.

  It was difficult for me to wait for her. It was difficult for me to forget her. I think the most difficult thing was to decide whether to wait for her or to forget her.

  But the unexpected was no more unexpected. It was all clear.

  My wait to finalize the marriage turned infinite. The prime reason behind this was that Simar’s list of concerns had turned infinite. The more I had stretched myself the more I was further expected to stretch. Unable to accept my wish of wanting to live with my family, and thus finding it difficult to marry
me, Simar gave birth to newer issues. Some were stupid enough.

  ‘How do I live with a non-vegetarian? You are an atheist whereas I wanted my life partner to believe in God. Also I need more time as I am thinking of doing my PhD now.’

  I was an atheist and I was a non-vegetarian when she was first attracted towards me. Overnight these attributes had started bothering her. I well remembered one of her last calls. She didn’t even think twice before saying that one of her concerns was that she would be known as the second girl in my life, when the rest of the world knew about Khushi and me.

  ‘On various social networking websites every fan of yours talks and will continue to talk about Khushi and you for ages.’

  She wanted me to make her feel comfortable about all that. In a way she meant that my same book—which she had once loved and which had made her fall for me—was now bothering her, because it had my memories of my dead girlfriend.

  I didn’t say anything. My silence spoke a thousand words. She didn’t hear any of them.

  I hung up the call. There was no need to explain anything. She had pierced my heart with whatever she had said.

  One can go miles to get the love of his life and then sacrifice a great deal to keep that love alive. And I too had done that when I was ready to settle down abroad, when I promised Simar her entire independence, when I said that: ‘For you I can even turn vegetarian and you are so precious for me, that I will push myself to regain my faith in God only if you are there with me.’

  When you are in love, you tend to think from the heart. That’s what I kept doing for most of the time. The sad part was that it was just me who kept doing that. But a relationship only works when both the people are willing to make sacrifices. I wanted to be her better half and not her slave. Unlike her, I didn’t have a long list of clauses which she had to fulfil before she could marry me. I simply wished for the obvious to happen and for her to accept my family. But that one wish was unacceptable to her, and became a bottleneck in our relationship. It turned everything between us sour.