Gate of Love

This is a short fiction I wrote long ago, I tidied it a bit and republishing it for your reading pleasure.

There were four people waiting before me. We were all seated comfortably. It was quite hazy outside where we waited. May be fog. I was not sure how long it would take for the gate to open. I was slipping into some sort of dream and then waking up to find that we were all still there, waiting.

Vaguely, very vaguely her face appeared in one of those dream,wake up sequences I was going through. I could see gloom in her eyes.

******

She was not the most beautiful in our batch. But she had the grace and intelligence which I liked when I first saw her. I used to frequent the college library. It was a cool and shady place with lots of trees and a huge building. My haunt was the basement where I could read a lot of old papers. Not newspapers but research papers. I was deep into understanding the human mind being a psychology major. It was fascinating. I used to spend all day there sometimes. It was during one of those visits there when I was sitting in that basement she crossed me. I was buried in thoughts but something made me look at her.

She came and sat across me. I looked up and said “Hi”.

She said “Hi”.

That was it. She was into her world and I was.

Was I ?

Second time it was a shopping area in our campus. I saw her with her friends and I was alone with a pineapple juice in my hand. She recognized me and said “Hi How are you?”. I guess she would have stopped at “Hi” but somehow being the second time we met, it had to be a bit longer by the Nth law of sociology. There was a five minute exchange of personal details, I remember.

She was doing computer science. She was that hard working and intelligent combination but at the same time very fascinating to have conversation with. We would have met few more times before it became a regular affair.

We had so many diverse topics to cover. I used to talk about Ray Kurzweil and his thoughts on how to construct a mind. She used to talk about algorithms that can be devised to simulate that. I used to talk about politics and the psychology of hoarding wealth and she used to talk about how machines can bring order to this world. It was always like connecting disparate things which brought out completely new meaning. And both of us had a taste for that I felt. We were always orthogonal.

******

The man in the front, I have seen him somewhere. Though the face is not all that clear because of this fog, I could make out from his features that he is known to me somehow.

But this stupid state of mine moving between semi-conscious and some sort of dream and this haze all around.

My God, what a crazy state to be in.

My mind slipped again I guess.

*******

It was on a rainy day in front of the beautiful lake inside our campus that I told her about my wish to be with her forever. It was quite dramatic I thought. I had been with this thought for a long time and went sleepless over it.

Nothing interested me except the time I spent with her. I was sitting through the lectures as if I shouldn’t be there. I was dining at the mess out of a long practiced habit of eating food. I was going with friends, but not listening to the words they spoke. Wherever I went, her image followed me like a dog going after a bone. It was unbearable. I did not know how I would get out of it. May be this is what is ‘being in love’.

I remember the night before I proposed to her was one of those best nights when I got a solid sleep. I was out of bed like a flower, fresh and liking my own being. All this gave me the courage to call her out. I knew in the depth of my heart that she liked me. Whenever I saw her, she had that twinkle in her eyes, and became animated.

But the thought of living with her is not something that I would still dare to ask her directly. I thought there is a tiny possibility that she might reject it and it would bring some sort of awkwardness into my life.

When we went to the shopping area, fixed a juice for ourselves and started walking around the lake, it was spontaneous. The conversation was like this..

‘What happened to you..Didn’t see you for a while’, She sounded a bit upset.

‘I had called you several times…you do not seem to respond’, I said.

‘No…oh my God, I had a trouble with this phone, just got the firmware updated’, She jumped.

‘By the way you look fresh today’, She could spot the change in him.

‘Yeah, had a good sleep after a while’

‘Why ? Slogging for the exams?’

‘Yes sort of, but you know you were also responsible. I was sleepless because you were occupying my mind as well’, I said and out of the blue I asked ‘Will you marry me?’ I was not ready to prolong the conversation. It was hanging on my lips. How can I keep talking something else when all along this thought was tormenting me?

It was quite sudden for me to have gone there. She became silent. I was kind of imagining what went on in her mind ‘Take off for higher studies, new people, new environment, broader life and where I fit in into that equation’.

I knew I jumped the gun. It must have been very hard for her to think of this as this item was probably towards the end of a long laundry list of her life.

I was stupid. And no other way I could see myself as. Why did I ask her this? With this I dropped a beautiful vase on the floor.

********

I could now see vaguely that the man in the front was trying to get up from his seat. After great difficulty he went and knocked on the gate. The gate was as before silent and still. When will it open ? Why am I waiting here? Who is that guy?

*********

When I went back to my hostel, I was sure the relationship had broken. Several days it went like that. I was busy with some presentations. The friend next door was quite noisy with his rock music. It used to be like that even before. But now I was hearing it. I went and knocked his door when he was listening to ‘Doors’.

‘Hey man, nice music’, I said. I could never understand how people appreciated Rock, but now I was looking from the other side of everything.

‘Hey, what man come on in, long time’, he was happy to see me.

‘Wow, you have a living out of this place man’, I was amazed by the way he had setup his small room.

He had a refrigerator, music system, TV, nice cozy bed, air conditioner, bean bag and a lot of big posters of grown up under dressed women around.

‘What happened to the girl?’, he asked. The whole hostel knew my affair.

‘Nothing..just a brief hiatus’, I said. I did not want to get into that and here I was doing exactly that.

‘You look depressed. I have never seen you like this’ , He could read me like tomorrow was Tuesday.

‘Yeah, a bit, but I will get over it’, I tried to sound positive.

‘Why don’t you have a gulp’, he said and opened the fridge, got a bottle of something, poured it in two glasses and offered me one.

I badly needed one and I gulped. It went on. The guitar was growing louder in the background. We were talking for I don’t know how long in loud voices.

At some point everything was slowing down around me. I saw him hand over another glass, that looked like milk. I gulped that too.

I am now watching him talk something. His lips were growing big by the minute into something monstrous and uttering those words.

It was very dark outside. Might have been very late into the night.

‘Why don’t we go for a ride?’, he asked.

‘Sure..’, I said, without being sure of saying that.

We both walked outside the hostel. His super bike was parked outside.

Next moment I felt the rush of fresh midnight air whizzing past me, sitting behind him.

He hollered something which whizzed past. I guess he asked me ‘You enjoying the ride’. I nodded my head.

We had a cup of coffee in some distant road side shop. The folks around were staring at us and our bike.

On the way back, he missed slowing down over a couple of speed breakers. I was still flying high with all that that went in. But I could see a bit better now.

There was this truck crossing us. He swerved to the side and the next moment we both were flying into the sky.

***********

Now a man dressed in a black overall with a hood came out of the gate. I could clearly see him and who is that ? ..I was seeing my next door friend talking to that man. My friend looked pale and looked like he was trying hard to convince him. He was shaking his head vigorously for some of the questions asked by the man. That man was listening with his sharp cold looks, unperturbed. He seem to know what he was doing. I saw the man hold my friend and walk through the door. The door shut behind them as before.

************

I woke up and smelt hospital.

I saw her. It appeared like she had been waiting for me to open my eyes. A smile appeared on her face.

‘You are alright’, She asked.

‘What happened ?’, my voice was not coming out.

‘You are alright. Thank God, Thank God…’, tears were rolling down her face.

‘What happened , why am I here ?’, I shouted a whisper.

‘Don’t worry just take rest, I will tell you later’, She said and left.

I felt weak and I tucked my head into the pillow.

When she came, the Doc was with her.

‘What happened to my friend?’, I managed to gain some strength in my voice now.

She looked at the Doctor. The Doctor was not in a hurry to answer that. It appeared like he was thinking of what he should say.

‘He is fine’, the Doctor said and looked at my girl.

***********

I knew he is no more because I no longer waited at the gate.