The Wandering Soul

He sucked her hard, bit her and she matched his fervour. She bit him back, kissed him with passion that could put anyone to shame, entwined her legs around him as if she didn’t want even an ounce of him escape from her, as if her life depended upon him, as if she was hanging on to him and he was the support she needed. And then the ultimate release. They both screaming not worrying that someone could hear them. It was necessary. That scream. It proved that both of them took each other to places that were just mythical.

Such was Zara and Rishab’s relation. After catching her breath, Zara looked at Rishab. He was in deep slumber. The sweat was still shining like jewels on his forehead. She got up and realised that she was naked. Not that she was ashamed of her nudity, but it was chilly outside. So, she put on the long shirt and got out from the warmth of the blanket. She opened the mini bar and found scotch there. She poured herself some in the glass, lit a cigarette and sat on the sofa. It was still dark;however the lights were twinkling in the mountains making it look like surreal. Zara leaned closer to the window, leaned on the sofa and put her feet against the damp glass window. Her wrist ached a little. She looked at it and found her first ever tattoo. A bird in the cage with the cage’s door open, but the bird still inside the cage. She touched and it ached more. A smile came on Zara lips. This was how her life was, wasn’t it? A bird in the cage! A bird in love with her imprisonment!

Zara lit the cigarette and knew it was time that she had to herself before Rishab would wake up again and they would again give in to their lust. Rishab was Zara’s perfect escapism and she was his. And this agenda worked for both of them. Zara was a professor in Psychology in a top notch university and was a freelance writer too. She kept on writing for journals and online portals and her writing was appreciated by everyone. One day, out of nowhere Rishab stumbled at her writing. A writer himself, Rishab found certain rawness in Zara’s writing that was named as finesse by everyone. Unlike others, Rishab didn’t use flowery words with her while appreciating it and this was the first thing that really attracted Zara in her. For Rishab things were in black and coincidentally black was Zara’s favourite colour.

They started meeting. And from the very first meeting, both of them realised that there was a strange attraction that was brewing in between them. Zara being a typical girl wanted to clear it out that she was in no mood for love. She didn’t tell Rishab that she would no longer be able to love anyone as you can’t ask a ruin to change itself into a home, but then thankfully love wasn’t for Rishab also. And from there started a dark journey that was filled with lust and mutual addiction.

There was more to Zara than Rishab knew. Actually Rishab knew everything, still there were places and corners wherein Rishab wasn’t allowed to enter and the same applied to Zara too. Even though Zara was elder to Rishab, it didn’t matter to him. The moment Zara heard this, she smiled inwardly. This generation... she thought, nothing mattered to them. Probably that’s why they were all so sorted. Zara had shifted to a new city, Bangalore after witnessing a terrible loss herself. She wanted to get away from her native place and her family understood and agreed only if she promised to visit them every month, which she duly and lovingly did. Zara had always been an independent person, so she rented an accommodation for herself and started living her new life. She never had any difficulty in having friends, so life was good... or maybe Zara had mastered the art of lying. Zara and Rishab spent time with each other on weekends every now and then. Passionate about travelling, these wandering souls often left for places far away from the maddening crowd where they could drown themselves... not only in each other but drown themselves somewhere where the demons of their past don’t haunt them.

Even though Zara and Rishab were really fond of each other, still love couldn’t spring up in between them. Two broken souls couldn’t make anyone happy. The cigarette was finished and Zara desperately wanted another but she knew Rishab hated the smoke. So she got up and poured herself another drink. She saw her phone lying on the table. Instinctively her fingers searched the path on her phone that she knew at the back of her hand, and there he was.... Avinash. The person who was Zara’s hell and heaven!

Zara had met Avinash while she was trying to figure out her life. During the starting of her career, she worked as a travel writer in a startup. It was there she had first met him. Avinash had come there in hope of exhibiting his travel pictures that he had taken after a tormentous toil of two years. The company didn’t end up accepting his pictures, but Zara and Avinash ended up striking a chord amidst all this. Zara fell head over heels in love with Avinash. Be it his larger than life ambitions, be it his cute face, be it his hazel eyes or be it the fact that there were times he needed Zara more than he needed the air to breathe. Zara had become a hopeless romantic and was flying high in the skies that was provided to him by Avinash not knowing that the higher she went, the more likely the chord will break and there would be a free fall.

And the chord did break one day. Avinash and his larger than life dreams were the ones that separated Zara from her. One can compete with a face, a person with flesh and blood, but one can’t compete with the qualities/traits that one sees in other persons. Suddenly Zara, who had a knack for making her words come to reality was seen as a person who was too boastful and pretended like she knew it all. Avinash’s life started filling with people who he thought were important for his dreams to come true. But in between all this, he started forgetting that Zara was left far behind. They were not teenagers when they met. It wasn’t like Avinash cheated on her physically. It was the emotional cheating that broke Zara and she ended up asking the most difficult yet the important question- she asked him to choose her or the people he was having in his life. Avinash gladly chose them over her and Zara left never to come back again.

She still remembers that conversation that made her vow that she would never go back to him again. It was raining that day. Zara was waiting for Avinash at her place. He was as usual late and she knew he was seeking solace with the people whom he thought are better match for his intellectual and emotional needs.

‘Avi, I’m asking you for the last time, are you going to come or not?’ Zara typed angrily as if the message would be delivered with a screaming tone.

‘You know what; I don’t give a damn about you anymore. You of all the people who I thought would support me want me to come crashing down. I regret that I’ve known you for so long. I’m better off with people who understand me rather than being with you who has ruined me. You can go and have fun with the people whom you have been meeting and leave me alone. We are done and I’m not going to see your face ever.’ And with that message she was blocked. She laughed to herself. Technology works in kiddish ways. The moment you get angry at someone, you block them making it sure that they don’t end up giving you any kind of assurance or anything. Zara had been blocked many times before also. She knew that it was just a tactic and soon Avi would come to his senses and they would be back again. But this time he was serious. He went and hasn’t returned till now.

Till today Zara thinks what wrong she did. She sure that done something wrong, but atleast one’s self love us to such madness that we are never able to see our faults. All the love that they harboured for each other was lost in no time. But he messaged once again. In the dead of the night, knowing that it was the end of both of them. When Zara saw it in the morning it was too late. He was gone and this time forever. She had deleted the message, but she still remembers every word, every punctuation mark of it and it read:

‘You can't fix the fact that I love you. That I love you more than I love being a photographer swinging with models. I have told you that I'd give it all up for you again and again, and you know what I think? I think you don't believe me. I think you believe that I will never choose you. Well, this time, I'm fixing it. I’m going to do exactly what you think. I’m going to chose them over you. You want a painful, difficult, devastating, life-changing, extraordinary love and I won’t give you that. Not that I can’t, I won’t give you. Somewhere, in another life, another reality, we are married and we have kids, and we live at some beach or mountain. But till then I’m going to curse you that you live without me.’ 

And yes she was cursed. The day she realized that Avinash was living his life with the people he had chosen, she moved out of that city and made her home at a new place. She could never stop loving him, and probably won’t ever be able to.She was perfectly fine with her loneliness when Rishab entered with his own brooding and two wandering souls for the time being found a place to stay. Even though their relationship is entirely sexual and none of them annoys the other person with mushy and romantic stuff, still Rishab gives her solace that she craves for. If not love, Rishab definitely gives her peace that she is looking for. 

Zara’s tears were on the verge. She checked Avinash’s picture once more and before she would surrender to the pain that was eating her from inside, she joined Rishab in the bed to lose her again in him.