How Far Would I Go...

"Now...nothing ever can separate me from you...stay with me, Raj!"

The girl painstakingly says these few last words in her dying breath with a painful smile on her lovely face.

"I'm always with you, Rashmi!", replies Raj while crying inconsolably, as he watches Rashmi breathe her last in his blood-drenched arms.

Raj then looks up and watches coldly at their relatives rushing towards them in fit of astonishment and sudden tragedy. He decides not to wait, for their plan must not succeed.

"I'm always with you", he murmurs again this time with finality in his tone. In a split second, suddenly realising that he has now nothing else to live for, he reaches for his dagger ironically gifted by Rashmi once and thrusts it deep into himself.

Trembling in pain, Raj then kisses Rashmi gently on her cheeks one last time and lies down in her arms.

The sun sets down slowly beyond the horizon, casting the final bleeding golden rays on the bodies of these two star-struck lovers who died embracing each other.

The credits started rolling on screen with the beautiful but haunting tragic theme music playing in background.

The cinema hall was now half-lit with the audience starting to leave one by one.

I waited for her to stand up first and then ask me to accompany as was her usual habit.

But she didn't.
The tragic background music had now faded into a distant faint murmur.

Minutes passed and the hall was now empty except for us two.

I reached out for her hand in the dark and stood up; signalling silently that it was time to leave.

Without a word, she followed me with her hand in mine, in the lobby, then out in the parking area and finally out of the cinema complex.

“Did the hero really have to kill himself at the end? You know how stupid that seems in otherwise sweet film.” I told her, in a rather offhand remark while trying to break the uneasy silence between us two.

But she didn’t reply a word to that also, not even a half-hearted nod.

We started walking together on our way back to home with her remaining silent throughout.

It started to bother me as I had never known her to be so.

"What's the matter? Is anything bothering you?" I asked, now concerned a bit.

"No...Nothing", was her short reply.

"Look...you know, you can always tell me, no matter what." I was now sure that it was not 'nothing'.

She sighed heavily and now looked directly at me, probably for the first time in that evening and spoke slowly.

"How far would you go, so as to be with me?"

"How far?  What does that mean? I mean...you are with me, right now. I'm standing right besides you." I stammered at this unexpected and sudden query.

By then, she had already stopped walking and so I had to.

I turned back to have a look at her face.

When was the last time, I had looked at her lovely face, in the golden rays of the setting sun, like this? I wondered.

Her eyes looked red and swollen. Had she been hiding her tears from me all this time?

"I asked you a question and you didn't reply.” there was a sternness in her soft rebuke now, that I could not remember hearing in a long time.

I tried to say something vague in reply, but chose not to.

How far would I go? I seriously never had any thoughts on that before. Because she had always been there, right beside me, whenever I reached out.

Her teary eyes twinkled in the last golden rays of the setting sun as I watched her absent-mindedly, searching for an answer to her question.

And deep inside my mind, an avalanche of memories suddenly came alive.

No, our story was not that of Romeo-Juliet even to the slightest.

No, I had not eloped with her against wishes of our respective families, to stay together in an abandoned temple on top of a hill, away from the bloody feudal past spelling an impending destruction.

Nor was I ever the knight in shining armour riding into the sunset with her in tow, after rescuing her from demons and evil step mothers, like in a fairy-tale.

Ours was a story, as un-filmy and un-romantic as one can ever be.

For all these years, we had grown up separate, without even having the knowledge of the other's existence.

Our respected elders decided our destinies and we just obliged.

Having her in my life was not something that I felt as achieving; rather it was a thrust obligation.

And most probably she felt exactly the same for me, or so I thought.

So days turned into weeks and weeks into months.

And we began knowing each other gradually, as slowly as it required.

She was there, whenever I reached out to. It was the only feeling that I had of her; nothing more, nothing less.

But did I really know what was going inside her heart, what she felt or what she dreamt of?

Or more importantly, did she really love me?

No, I had never asked these questions to myself and I never even tried to bother myself with those.

And suddenly today, her unexpected query and teary face caught me off-guard.

All these days, I had become so acquainted having her near me that I could not imagine her ever being far.

So...how far would I go?

Then in my mind, pictures started to float about all moments that I had spent with her.

About those rainy afternoons, when we just sat quietly side by side for hours, with not even a word between us...

About those late office hours, when I came back in the dead of night only to find her wide awake, waiting for me and then lamely denying to me that she did so knowingly...

And about those painful weeks in hospital bed, when I woke up to find her by my side watching me like a baby, no matter at what hour of day or night...

Does ‘love’ always have to be loud and colourful, in order to get noticed?

Isn’t ‘always being there no matter what’ the one and only form of true love?

I thought of my parents; the perfect example of companionship and understanding in a relationship, but without a fairytale like romantic tale to tell.

And now I realised what the sudden pang of pain meant when she asked how far I would go to be with her. It is only when you lose something, you get to realise how close it used to be to your heart.

Her profound silence said it all, how all her happiness in life went around me only.

Her silent acceptance of me and whatever I was.

But I could fathom its depth only now when bombarded with the taunting yet simple question of her.

I went ahead and kissed on her cheeks drenched now with a tear drop.

“I will go not have to go any far; as you will always be there by my side, till the end of days.” Was my reply.

She tried to smile through the tears and held me close as if today was going to be the end of days.

And to see that smile again, I might as well traverse till the edge of the worlds.

I could now identify with the nothingness and purposelessness in the absence of love that would have driven the hero to take this extreme step at the end of the film and it all started to make sense.

The sun then set down slowly beyond the horizon, casting the final bleeding golden rays on us, the two silent lovers, who now stood in the middle of street, embracing each other (and interrupting the traffic).