And he thought about her. It is the time that she should be leaving him and everybody. He is very sad and he told this to his friend. “You are not the only one to sorrow” answered his friend. “Yes everybody” he responded less truthfully and more bitterly. He thought about the girl. What should be she thinking now? These days he happens to meet her often. Never planned, but always expected. “Yes, she is beautiful, very beautiful” he told himself. But the important thing he liked about the girl was her modesty. She used to mingle around the people; she used to talk freely whosoever is present. And yet, she always maintained the line of modesty. One day she brought her boyfriend as handsome as she was beautiful, ending the speculation and breaking the heart of everybody. He thought this as a very clever move. As true to his own spirit, his logic told his heart to forget about her. And he obeyed. He was, after all, slave of his own logic and of his own ideas of limit of tolerance. He began to know that he is getting charmed by the beauty of the girl. The thought disturbed his proud mind. Although he was ordinary, he made his life more than any simplicity that that particular life can possess. After all he was a down-trodden person raised in misery and has come a long way to realize his dreams. The respect about him was come from unquenched optimism, his willingness sacrifice his desires for his dreams. He felt ashamed that only a single smile of a beauty dissolved his well-earned pride of many years .
And boy used his usual logical thinking and concluded that it as a natural process. As a child, he always wanted to play cricket. His dreams were filled with cricket matches, peacocks dancing in the field, ghosts in wrecked house and similar things. “May be this is a side effect of being as a youth to get sexually attracted towards girls. Why then we consider it as a sin and be so shy to declare the desire towards each other? Why it happens that the line of morality lies in between the modesty and the animal-like desire?”, he continued, “You need somebody to love”. As a man, he was bound to have sexual feelings against one or another girl.
He hoped that the girl would understand his feelings even if she cannot reciprocate the affection he had in his mind for her. Now as the condition for an affair was over, he just hoped to talk to her. “Sometimes it is better to have those beautiful flowers in the garden, rather than cut them off and have it for yourself only. You see them regularly until they were sent to some prince worthy of such things. You can only give your blessings to the flowers to sacrifice your life to their beauty”.
But the thought made him sad. Tears rising in his eyes, he begins to lament this painful situation where his heart put him in. His wisdom knew that she was nothing but personification of his imagination. He knew that everybody tries to find his/her sweetheart of his dreams in the existent person. “The world is full of MAYA (Illusion) and our desires let us become what we are now”.
There was going to be the customary farewell to the people who completed their internship/exchange and will be going back to join their universities. The girl was among them. Unhappy she was, as miserable was he, they began to converse among themselves as they got an opportunity for it.
She said, “Well, It is important for me to put modesty above desires. I know that you like me and I am not going to speak the reason that you already knew. But, you got to know the mind of a girl. If you think they go only with the appearance, you are wrong. They are so many things which come to our mind just like you. I have a boyfriend and he is the one I have chosen after a lot of deliberation. I know what you think of us western people. You think we as a community are weak in our faith and dishonest in our promises given to their love.
Boy responded, “I never meant that! I just put my observation. I have come across the boys and girls who has one day one mate and another day another”.
“Well”, she continued, “I cannot be too sure to tell about other girls, but in general we are not like what you think. Do you know how much pain we suffer when it comes to decide about these matters? Do you know how does it feel when everybody ogles at you and you can feel their eyes on your parts of body? Do you know how much pain we feel when a virtuous person finds our company sinning to their virtue? Do you know how much struggle we have to do through this male dominated world?
“Yes, it’s true that it is a hard life for girls.” He answered, “But partly it is because of your scanty cloths and funny behavior that suggests how much you like to be admired for your beauty. It could be the case that you are the reason for your own treatment. You get what you want.”
“THIS IS NOT TRUE” She responded, “and there is a very thin line between admiring a person with long verses and making a person un-comfortable with your constant ogling and I will not make it more clear to you since you know the further details about it.
“In that case,” Boy answered,” You girls are a way to allure us away from our paths of virtue and the glory”.
But, she continued, “You have already read, ‘A woman in Berlin’. Tell me, what legitimate and illegitimate methods the soldiers used to get what they wanted from a woman? Do you not find it hideous to ask that protagonist lady of intelligence for a night in an exchange of one day bread? Do you not grieve, on reading that she was raped by those animal instinct people to pay the price she was not directly indebted to? And let me ask you a question, what decision you would have taken if you were in that situation. Would you have yield? Would you have considered it natural to fulfill your appetite on the prey caught in the net? Or would you have rather refused to yield to the temptation?
Boy was startled. He got answer from the corner of his heart which was the purest part of his soul and he grew afraid. Nevertheless he declined to comment and stared at the girl stupidly.
She continued, “Are we a thing, an object to be used for your pleasures and left alone in a cage till the unstoppable old age creeps through the bars, pierces our body and buttresses our mind? Do you think we do not have as much mind like you with a obsession for a certain boy and dislike for another, respect for this one and dishonesty for another? Just let the male-female stuff out of your head and you will understand that I am like you. I have also certain respect and liking for you under the limit of tolerance that you always consider your domain. My parents has brought up me by teaching me the virtue of respecting respectable, of being polite with everyone, to be modest when in the society, to love unconditionally La Sole, the only one. Above all, they have taught me to hold the self-respect as the precursor of all the things earlier mentioned.
I have never stopped expressing respect and liking to you just as you have never stopped outlasting me with your remarks on the virtues I possess. I believe that we are like each other in certain respect. Whether you are a beautiful girl, or handsome guy, you can have more or less similar virtues and even similar faults. Whosoever you are and whosoever we became on account of our deeds, the gilt of non-virtuous suffering will be there. Always. ”
Boy listened all this with rapt attention and marveled at the intelligence and the deepness of her thought. He already liked the girl and from then on, he began to respect her for the intelligence she possessed.
The time came for her to go back to her university. Two days before her departure, she gave him a book concerned about her country. They boy become really happy. He has given her a present for the Christmas and she returned the gratitude by presenting something which was useful to him. He thanked God (he believed in him sometimes). He knew that there was some place in her heart which is his own, and it was important that she herself has given that position to him. He realized that it is the liking to good person by which you can be also good. If you express liking to other person then it is very likely that it would be returned back. “She is a just girl” he thought. Here is the poem he wrote about this girl to lament her departure which was to be recounted and rehearsed again and again among the friends who never meet again.
All aboard the ship for the deep sea , life is a business, pay you must a fee
N’ I choose the only choice given to me, to see you once and never again,
As a rainbow sees never the rain, With love n life, with sorrow n pain
Now the journey is coming to an end, I have for you only blessings to send
Without any hope for my heart to tend
Little corner for you in my little heart, To remember you sometime ages apart
While dreaming about the end’s start
If you happen to meet sorrow in life, your heart lies in the shadows of knife
Or you have with your love bitter strife
Remind yourself about my love and liking, Laugh, dance, the rainy weather n striking
And remember my poems to you in writing
Escape you must even if it is too narrow, N’ do not grieve over your present sorrow
For beautiful past has beautiful tomorrow
If death ever comes you to suppress, do not weep to tell him my address
I will still be here to fight your case
I will keep my eyes for you open, To see your dream in God’s ocean
To sail there and never back again, I say I will remember you till then