Imagine a room filled with smoke, cigarette ash scattered across the floor, an ashtray brimming with thoughts and cigarette butts, and leftover food packets strategically placed to form a path from the bed to the door. Laundry clothes, neatly folded, have been in a corner for a week (or maybe more) and the bedsheet is barely holding on to the mattress to stay put. Not the most pleasant sight you’d have in mind when you think of rooms where humans live, but this would be me. Champion at procrastination and rants, living life one day at a time, confused, depressed perhaps, totally anxious, and not exactly someone you’d call charming. Amidst all this mess that you see in my room and the cluttered emails in Outlook, where finding an email sent yesterday is a Herculean task, she happens. As soon as the watch on my hand annoyingly vibrates, I drop every task at hand and jump towards my phone just so that I can talk to her, even if it’s for just a minute. How I used to say that I would never want to date her again because I could never, and all of it went into the bin the minute I saw her standing right across me in the mall I’ve probably visited more times than I’ve visited my college classrooms by now. I see her merely ten feet away from me and my heart starts racing faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (Apologies Herr Einstein). Eight months ago, I would've considered this hyperbole, but now it feels real and the closest explanation of who she is. I move towards her slowly, trying to control my breath, and she completely disregards any heart attacks I might’ve had before wrapping her arms around me. For four years, I’d longed for this, being in her arms, having her in mine, and I finally had it. She was standing right in front of me, and it took all of my strength and then some to resist kissing her right there. And all of this is before she’s opened her mouth to even say “Hi”. I’m still amazed as to how can one not fall in love with her. I looked at her once and just accepted that even if she was mine, I could never stop all the other men from trying to woo her away. And that the only thing I could do was to put in so much effort that everything was the bare minimum for her. I’m still trying to put in as much as I can and probably beyond that because that’s how she is. I’d ditched my best friend and made her wait for a whole 50 minutes just so I could spend 15 minutes extra with the love who was sitting right beside me. And then I had the privilege to walk her home as if the Gods wanted to say sorry for every wrong I’ve ever been through. If you think meeting her after four years was the epitome of magic I was going to get in my life, you’d simply be wrong.
I’d thought so, too, that what could be more magical than this? I had her, we were talking, we walked around, we had food together, and we sat and looked at each other, I could finally hold her hand, she had already hugged me, and everything was perfect. What more could I ever want? Oh, she has her ways. Merely existing and making mine and everyone else’s world prettier is something that comes naturally to her. She can just sit and not say anything to me, and I still wouldn’t stop blushing. We planned a meet and boy was I ecstatic to see her at the metro station running towards me with her arms open wide as she practically jumped on me. I swear I could hear the gods clicking the stopwatch and stopping time for me to let me enjoy the moment as much as I wanted to. If it weren’t for smartphones and social media addicts who’d make it their mission to keep Delhi Metro clean of PDA, I would’ve never let go, ever. The gods though had planned even more for me. I mention gods so many times because how else would you explain that I get to hold her tightly to my body and her resting her face on my shoulder as I drift into my heaven in the small and cozy Laphing place at Majnu ka Tila? I wasn’t planning it to be a date, but her sitting beside me, looking all “Apsara”, how could I not fall in love? Earlier I had mentioned I’d want her to explore herself and not be bound in a Long-Distance Relationship with a guy who’d treat his floor as a dustbin but that day, when I held on to her shoulder and pulled her close to mine, when she rested her head on mine, I knew I could never see her with anyone else.
I’d still give up an arm and a leg to travel back to that day just to hold her close even if it were fifteen seconds more. Now, looking at her in video calls is the new normal. And I love that too. She’s too pure to not be loved. She teaches me medicine. She listens to me when I talk about work. She remembers my roadmaps better than me. She comforts me when I need it the most. She exists and makes my life a hundred times more pleasant. She listens peacefully to all my lectures as I try to preach all 4 years of engineering to her. But most of all, she cares. She shows me affection in a way that I didn’t know I wanted. She keeps me humble and grounded. She reminds me that I can do stuff that even I don’t know I can. She takes pride in my achievements and doesn’t let me get sad when I mess up. I look at her and suddenly everything that I’m thinking of goes away and all I’m left with is how much the gods are pleased with me, that I can call this beautiful, adorable, smart, attractive, pretty, funny, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious person my girlfriend. I know I wrote something of this sort earlier which wasn’t very nice. I believe this isn’t as nice either. You deserve a lot more than this woman. You are my pi. You deserve every small and big happiness and I promise to bring them to you. Forever is very limited, I hope you stay with me beyond the limits of the Universe, and maybe beyond that too, my favorite irrational constant.