Skip to main content

The Music of Romance

Fiction

Solomon stared at the message.  It is not often that a message comes traversing twenty years and makes your heart skip a beat.  No, the message was not twenty years old.  He had had no contact whatever with the sender of that message for twenty years.  In those days, twenty years ago, she was a symphony that flowed through his veins.

“You made me pass English.  Remember the guidebook you gave me?  And the tricks you suggested?  I passed English because of that.  Otherwise I wouldn’t be the teacher that I am today.  Thanks.  Sangeeta.”

Solomon read the message again and again.  His heart pulsated faster and faster.  The heartbeats struggled to recreate a familiar symphony from the mounting feeling of nostalgia.

Does she remember only the guidebook and his tricks for passing an exam?  Have you forgotten the math exam in which you showed me some answers so that I passed?  Your roll number just preceded mine and we were sitting on the same bench for the exam. 

He wished he could ask her that.  He wished to ask a lot more things. 

“Why don’t you understand calculus properly so that you don’t have to copy my answers?”  She asked him after that exam.

“Why don’t you teach me?” He asked seriously.  She was good at math.

He learnt differentiation and integration from her.  As she explained the steps he would watch her lips occasionally.  It was a delight to see her lips moving in umpteen directions as she made dy and dx dance on the pages that they filled together.  The dance metamorphosed into a Wagnerian opera that flowed into his being, through his veins. 

Sangeeta, you were the music of my heartbeats.  No, he couldn’t send her that message either though he had typed it out in the Whatsapp rectangle.  

She had never encouraged the overtures he tried to make.  Friendship without romance was her clear stand though she never said anything at all in that regard.  But he knew that she had understood his feelings.  Which woman doesn’t?  But a relationship between a Sangeeta Nair and a Solomon Joseph could not grow into a Wagnerian opera in those days.  So Solomon gratified his romance reading the Songs of Solomon in the Bible.  Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the people.  I delight in her shade and her fruit is sweet to my taste.

Solomon wrote his own songs too. 

Do you know why you are so beloved to me
Even when I know you will never be mine?

The kiss-curl that wafted in the fan’s breeze touching her cheek gently and seductively made him long to be a wisp of hair in that curl.

When love smothers my heart like a burden
You are there without your knowledge holding me tight…

After college they parted ways.  Never to meet again.  Each one knew that they wouldn’t meet again.  Some things don’t need words to be articulated.

“How did you get my number?”  He tapped the message and sent it.

“Met one of our college mates who had your number.  They are planning an alumni meet…”

His heart pounded again.  An alumni meet?  Will I meet her again?

She was married.  Her children were studying in a residential school near the bank where he worked as manager.  The Whatsapp messages came and went briskly. 

“What about your family?” She asked.

When love smothers my heart like a burden
You are there without your knowledge holding me tight…

No, he couldn’t write that to her.  No, love is a Wagnerian opera.  Let it flow through his veins.  Without death.  Without interruption. 

He will meet her at the alumni meet, he decided.  Will he tell her the truth?  No, he shouldn’t.  He can just say that he never wanted to marry so that she won’t guess anything.  That’s part of the Wagnerian opera, isn’t it?











Comments

  1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 17, 2017 at 1:16 PM

    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JaiNovember 19, 2017 at 8:01 AM

    "It was a delight to see her lips moving in umpteen directions as she made dy and dx dance on the pages that they filled together." - simply lovely...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pranju chakrapaniNovember 26, 2017 at 12:33 PM

    Beautiful! Tomichan, simply beautiful.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Coming-of-Age Poems

Lubna Shibu Book Review Title: Into the Wandering Multiverse Author: Lubna Shibu Publisher: Book Leaf , 2024 Pages: 23 Poetry serves as a profound medium for self-reflection. It offers a canvas where emotions, thoughts, and experiences are distilled into words. Writing poetry is a dive into the depths of one’s consciousness, exploring facets of the poet’s identity and feelings that are often left unspoken. Poets are introverts by nature, I think. Poetry is their way of encountering other people. I was reading Lubna Shibu’s debut anthology of poems while I had a substitution period in a section of grade eleven today at school. One student asked me if she could have a look at the book as I was moving around ensuring discipline while the students were engaged in their regular academic tasks. I gave her the book telling her that the author was a former student in this very classroom just a few years back. I watched the student reading a few poems with some amusement. Then I ask...
8 comments
Read more

How to preach nonviolence

Like most government institutions in India, the Archaeological Survey of India [ASI] has also become a gigantic joke. The national surveyors of India’s famed antiquity go around finding all sorts of Hindu relics in Muslim mosques. Like a Shiv Ling [Lord Shiva’s penis] which may in reality be a rotting piece of a Mughal fountain. One of the recent discoveries of Modi’s national surveyors is that Sambhal in UP is the birthplace of Kalki, the tenth incarnation of God Vishnu. I haven’t understood yet whether Kalki was born in Sambhal at some time in India’s great antique history or Kalki is going to be born in Sambhal at some time in the imminent future. What I know is that Kalki is the final incarnation of Vishnu that is going to put an end to the present wicked Kali Yuga led by people like Modi Inc. Kalki will begin the next era, Satya Yuga, the Era of Truth. So he is yet to be born. But a year back, in Feb to be precise, Modi laid the foundation stone of a temple dedicated to Kalk...
12 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
15 comments
Read more

The Life of a Courtesan

  Book Review Title: The Last Courtesan: Writing my mother’s memoir Author: Manish Gaekwad Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 Pages: 185 Writing the biography of one’s mother who was a courtesan is not quite a pleasant task. Manish Gaekwad undertakes that arduous task in this book and does a fairly eminent job with it. ‘Courtesan’ may not be quite the exact translation of ‘tawaif,’ which is what Rekha, Gaekwad’s mother, was. A courtesan is essentially a sex worker whose clients are wealthy men. But a tawaif is primarily an artiste, a singer of ghazals as well as a dancer. Sex is part of that job, no doubt. When a woman sings lines like Apna bana le meri jaan / Haye re main tere qurbaan [Make me yours, my love / I am your sacrifice] to a man, sex becomes a natural climax of the show. Rekha is a tawaif. She tells her own story in this book. The author writes the narrative as if his mother is telling him her life’s story. Towards the end of the narrative, Rekha asse...
4 comments
Read more