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?