Blind Sight

"The feeling of love!
what is it? can you express it if you haven't experienced?"

...

Long time back someone asked me this question, and I said no. But the truth is you can.Its the only feeling you can express without feeling it yourself. You can define it, you can feel it for no reason and you can share it. And the strangest part is, it is beyond pain, sorrow, fun, anger any feeling that ever existed in your mind and that is because it can over come all of them at any age. Shelf them into a soft numbing cocoon, where you have the liberty to feel what you want to feel.

I had met him, cause he lived across my old home.Weird, intelligent and a bit intolerable and that is because we were two people very much alike.very different in capabilities yet similar in reactions. we never liked the same subjects, we never liked same people... but when hurt we were like sea turtles, hurdle down into our own warm space. We liked sports, he cricket, I football. We liked books, He non-fiction I fiction. We liked travelling, he on bikes and I on foot.You name it and you wont find a match. Sometimes when we were young we used to play together, as our friends used to be common. Never on the same team. With all, we used to fight like hell, never to support another. He was a scorer in maths, I was never. He liked chemical reactions, and i almost puked over it :).He hated poetry, I loved poetry. He was the quite one and I a riot.
Trust me,
If there had to be a tree, and i be the bloom, he would be the last leaf flying over the fall. Probably if you ask me, I would answer I know him better than myself :) and yet I have spoken to him only once in my life...

It was December 10th at a common friends birthday party. I was 16, he 17. I was sitting in porch and in middle of 40 people wishing birthday to one of our common friends. he came and sat in the seat next to me. I had a weird feeling... because though we knew everything about each other, we never wished to talk... we went on knowing about each other probably just cause we wanted to know why we hated each other so much... we were young the reason was beyond our understanding...and we kept on nudging ourselves.. stretching an extra arm to know.. whats thats so different in us and in nobody else. It was like that mad race.. where nobody is a winner.. but everybody ran just to know whats at the other end.. our mad race was a short one.. where he came to know whats at the end way before that December night than i ever did.

I gave him a hollow gaze with my mouth full of home baked cake... He waited... I started looking here and there.. finished my food.. drank water..spoke about a million things to a million people... He still waited.. Gave him an obnoxious look... ignored him royally but he still waited... I wonder if I loathed him so much why din I walk out... may be even that was an ego of "why should I go first" ... But he still waited....the party grew thinner and thinner... when it was time for all the girls to leave... I gave him a final look of "whats happening" ... and he said

"stop hating me for 5 minutes and answer me this...
why people like each other?"

I almost nauseated listening to this... I was bad as most of the times i used to be.. gave him a very dirty look.. stood up and said

"I dont know"

He stood up too, almost freezing in the December cold

"can you express it if you havent experienced?"

I was red hot with anger by listening to his guts.


.....


That was the last day I saw him, I learnt that he left for his college soon. I breathed a sigh.. but an uncomfortable one..I was ashamed of my behavior... I tried reasoning that his question was inappropriate at such a young age, that too to a girl next door... but at the core of my heart I knew, that he was different... different than all of us...
and he knew that I knew his difference!


After 7 years, and all that I fathom... I remember every single thing about him.. may be he was the only one I ever put any effort to know about... Today, I dont know where he is, what is he doing.. probably we wont even know each other even if we cross. But if someday he happens to read this.. he would know that it took me seven years to know whats at the end of the road, which he did that December night.

That surreal hate was because of the liking towards differences, That anger was to forget the underlying emotion..an emotion that maybe he liked me and I did not... and he knew that I did not. That soft numbing feeling, he could feel even at the age of 17 without experiencing any affection himself.

And of all the things I know about him... I know exactly how he would have felt the moment I walked out from there...Humiliated, lonely and broken ... broken not because of what i said... but maybe because he knew i missed a chance to grow up.. be tolerant to emotions.. be strong..way before than I can actually uncover myself.

....

"Il stop saying, if that would make u less sad" was the last thing he said when I rushed out of that party... I wish i could turn back and tell him... "only if you could know what made me sad"