THINGS THAT HAD TO BE SAID

That evening when we came back, I skipped the team dinner and had my food alone in my room contemplating what to do next. It would be wrong to say that I was not angry with Piyush. I was more than angry, and didn't want to face anyone. 'One heartbreak is not the end of your life!' I wanted to scream at him,

'Don't you see how much I love you?'

I decided to write him a few texts, but I wanted him to read them all before he sent me his response, or worse, blocked my number.

Finally, I found a solution ----an email. Yes, the mode of communication which is the best for lovers after letters and calls, is email. Not many of us explore that option, but I feel that chatting or texting doesn't really convey our messages and tone well. I would prefer an email any day to a chat or text. I still have a copy of the email I wrote to him that evening. I didn't have his personal email id, so I sent it to him official email id instead, a stunt I would never recommend to anyone. I was a fool who played with her job. I could have been issued a warning. Or worse, I could have been terminated for the act. But a mind ruled by a heart drunk on love cannot understand any reasoning.

To: Piyush@itcons.co.in

Bcc- AdiraS@gmail.com

Dear Piyush,

Firstly, I want to apologize for sending this email

to this email id, but I do not have your personal

email id, and I didn't want to send a text as I

feared you would block me before I'd said all that

I want to.

Yes, it is true that I love you and I do not

even know since when. But I am not asking you

to like me back if you can't. All I am asking from

you is a chance to see if we can be what I want us

to be.

Whenever I see you, I feel all the love

swelling inside deep within me and taking over

all my senses. I know it sounds cliched, but

that is precisely what happens to me. Today,

when we were walking together, it dawned on

to me how much I wanted to be with you, more

than I have ever wanted anything else in my life.

Losing you to someone else would mean losing

myself into a space too dark to imagine. I want

anything but that.

All I can say to you is that just because of

something which happened in the past, do not

stop believing in love, do not stop looking for

love, do not stop loving . . .

Adira

I wrote and rewrote my name thrice with 'yours in love',

'always yours' before it, but then deleted all of that. Finally, I sent it with only my name. Just when I hit send, Rajbir knock the door of my room. I didn't want to meet his eyes, so I didn't opened the door, pretending to be asleep. Anyway, a response from Piyush was not expected until the next morning, if he didn't walk straight to the HR department to get me terminated from my job.

A few minutes later there was a ping in my mobile phone. It was a message from him----he had read my email and wanted to talk.

'A phone call?' I asked him.

'Yes,' he replied to me, and I dialled his number as I walking into the living area.

'Hi,' Piyush was talking in hushed tones, and I followed suit.

'Hi.'

'Listen, I want to tell you something before we do this,' I couldn't help but gape at his words. Before we do this!

'Yes . . . Okay,' I managed to say. I was surprised and excited beyond words.

'Honestly, I didn't think that after failing in love once and seeing my parents' marriage fall apart in front of my eyes, I would dare to be in love again. I believed that love dies with time; it is an overrated emotion. Once it leaves your side, you are left alone. But it seems that I am still in love with the idea of love!' I heard a little smile at the end of his rather long sentence.

Sometimes I wonder if he and I were the same person. We were both a little broken, entirely messed up and madly in love with the idea of love.

'Love dies when you stop working on it,' I told him in a reassuring tone. My mind was running on an overdose of emotions.

I believe a man can easily fall for beauty, but external attraction doesn't last long. It is an intelligent mind that keeps anyone in love with their partner forever. When I say 'an intelligent mind,' it doesn't mean that he had completed his college degree which is why he was smart, or that he could solve mathematical problems the fastest. It means a men with whom I could have meaningful conversations all night long. Conversations that had the ability to make one go deeper into them; discussions that keep you up all night and give you goosebumps whenever you revisit them.

Our conversation that night was like that. I remember it word for word. We spoke about life--his life, and mine. Our goals, personal and otherwise, our emotional needs; and we discussed my favourite topic on earth----love.

'Love should make one breathless and weak. Love should allow one to let the other person into one's soul, with one's soul being a place which is so within me that I would change forever when love touches it!' Sometimes, even today I hear his words, as if he is whispering them to me, in my ears. I knew that I could change the world for him if he would love me back. That was the first time he sang for me, on my insistence, of course. His voice have me goosebumps and the recollection of that time still does.

When he asked me to tell him something about me that no one else knows, I confessed to him that I loved photography and was planning to buy a professional camera. I told him that he had been my muse for the last three years and promised to send him a copy of all the pictures that I had taken of him as soon as we landed in India.

At 3 a.m., I realized that he had gone off to sleep as he'd stopped talking. I disconnected the call and slipped under my sheets, smiling like an idiot!

The next day, our team had plans to go to the Great Ocean Road. It was the last weekend before we went back home, and I was excited beyond words.