Falling In Love With A Murderer

Blindness

"This is B7, isn't it?" I never liked when random people talked with me while traveling. People say traveling is about meeting new people, I say fuck it. It is not, at least for me. For me traveling is an excuse to escape from mundane routine to find few words to scribble some poems about, which nobody reads.

"Yes." I replied to the girl. It was a smart move. I wanted to keep the exchange minimal.

"Ummm.." I looked at her because the buzzing was disturbing. I subtly asked with my frustrated eyebrows, "What now?"

"Can I take the window seat? I mean I tend to get dizzy and most of the time vomit." She made that hand gesture pointing at her mouth to elaborately explain me how the science of vomiting works.

This is what I did not like about people. How could they not notice how much the window seat means to me? The bus is like the cave and the window seat is the ticket to outside world. That is how I create my poems. 'Now you are asking me to shut my eyes off.' That is what I wanted to say to her.

I went with, "Sure." Still insisted on keeping the exchange minimal.

After a lengthy struggle to adjust herself on the seat she finally came to rest. 'Pheew', I literally let that out of my mouth. She deserved it.

"You know I generally book the tickets early to make sure I get the window seat but this time I had to leave the valley on a day notice. And hence. I hope you don't mind."

"No, No. I don't." was what I should have said. But I am an honest man. "Uh-huh." I pretended to acknowledge whatever came out of her mouth.

She looked at me as if she wanted to add something more but maybe she realized how not interested I was. So, she went back to whatever she was doing when not disturbing me.

"Dai..." She yelled at the top of her voice calling the driver to stop the bus. It had been an hour. I was sound asleep. But at that very instance I literally forgot how sleeping felt like. She screamed like she saw a terrorist ready to detonate his suicide vest inside the bus.

Driver must have felt the same because I almost broke my nose when he hit the brakes.

"Yaar Bhaiya, quickly give me my change back." She screamed at Chatpate waala bhaiya. I almost forgave her. Had I not seen the man hand her three coins of One rupee, I would have forgiven.

"Sorry." She looked at everybody in the bus. She undervalued the value of sorry.

"Sorry." She whispered into my ears. It was supposed to be for me. I responded with a smile which hardly said that it was okay.

"Here have some." she offered me her cone of extra spicy chatpate.

"No, thanks. I hardly eat when traveling. Besides, it causes constipation." At that very moment I regretted not limiting my response to minimum.

"I shall open the window before anything embarrassing happens. Trust me. I have a sharp sense of smell." Did she just say that?

I did not think it was appropriate to acknowledge whatever she said. She understood. We did not talk for another half an hour.

Suddenly, A disgusting odour hijacked our seat. I knew what it was. I turned left to look at her.

"Yeah, you were right. Bad for the belly." She slid the window open as she spoke.

I already started hating the Girl.

"What would I say to aunt? She must be thinking that I killed her son.

I know.

But....

You are going with me.

Me? I am not sad. I am just angry."

After almost a two hour long chat she was forced to hang up on the phone call which I couldn't help but overhear.

"It wasn't me this time. Don't look at me like that." She noticed me looking at her. I couldn't help, somebody died in her family and she was extremely cool as if she was going to attend her sister's wedding.

"Nothing. I was just looking outside." I quickly saved myself.

"You bet you were."

"Looking outside helps me think."

"It does? Most of the time it is the opposite. Do you miss this seat? I mean I can swap seats if you want. I think I am not getting sick anymore."

"It is okay."

"Thank God, I almost thought you would say yes." And she goes back to dialing her phone.

I went back to hating her again.

I took my tablet out and tried to type a poem with a word I mined out of this awful journey with this awful co-passenger.

"Weird Destination

Escaping is not enough

When you are confined inside a temporary civilization

Raised out of four wheels

It keeps on moving

And you keep on losing things

You hardly had grip of

It is hard to share yourself

When you don't know what you are made of

It is a weird destination

For every person has a different purpose

And for me

I am lost

Without even being found at first"

"Wow" I literally jumped off my seat by her sudden approach. She scared me. She handed me her version of verdict. "You wrote it on the spot? Although I do not like the structure and the flow I could relate with every words you wrote."

She did not like it. Big News. Nobody likes them. My poems.

"Thank you. I am glad that I was of any help."

"You are funny."

"I am?"

She laughed very weirdly as she said, "Let me open the window first. No eating when traveling anymore."

Have you heard about the hate at first sight? I lived it with her. I wondered how could someone be so crude.

"My fiance died yesterday!" She exclaimed in out of the blue.

"It was not someone in your family?" I don't know why I said that.

"So, you were overhearing."

"I mean.." I stammered gibberish.

"La khaana khana jharau hai." Repeated the ticket collector with a very loud voice. The strangest thing about Nepali ticket collectors was they could make you feel hungry even if you ate a second ago.

We had to halt our conversation to acknowledge the TC's request.

"Are you going?" She asked.

"No, I hardly eat when I am traveling."

"I know but it's 9 in the afternoon and you have hardly ate anything."

"You go. I will come later if I feel like eating." 

God, her fiance died, why can't she be sad and leave me alone?

"Come on, I'll pay."

"I am getting up just because you said that you will pay." I had to agree. I knew she wouldn't quit. And, yes, I have a great sense of humor.

We agreed to eat Wai Wai soup. I may sound vague but it was the only healthiest thing available. No offense to Mr.Choudhary.

We found ourselves a place to sit and we waited. I did most of the sitting and waiting, she on the other hand, I think her patience died way before her fiance. Sorry for being so crude. We talked, waiting was a difficult task for her.

"You write? Like, seriously."

"I try."

"Journey makes you

And distances break you

For distances are calculated past

because you always know

that the journeys betray

Because they tend to never last." She quoted.

"Wow..How...where did you read that?"

"I follow this blog. I do not quite remember the writer's name. The writer is Sangad or something. I had a crush on him. It is a funny story." She weirdly resorted to blushing as she revealed her secret.

"Great." I was moved. I was startled by the fact that the girl I hated appreciated poetry.

"You are better than him."

"Am I?" I was surprised.

Our orders came. It was funny. She didn't talk the entire time we were eating.

"You do realize that you have to pay the bill at the next stop. I have heard that even a bowl of noodle is very expensive there." She laughed as she created this horrible joke.

"You played me." I decided to go with the flow.

"Hell, Yeah." I couldn't still believe that she was the girl whose fiance just died.

We did not know what was going to happen that night. If we knew then, we probably wouldn't have taken the bus.

"You, idiot." She was furious.

"You know I should have believed you when you said you did not eat while traveling. You were there for a freaking hour. I almost asked the owner to break the door." She added with the same temper.

"I had a food poisoning. I have a digestion problem." I was surprised that I was offering her an explanation. "Where is the bus?" I suddenly noticed that the bus was gone.

"I can't believe you are asking that. It left us here."

"How could it leave us here? It's driver's duty to wait till all the passengers get on the bus."

"You are preaching rules now?"

"Why are you being so rude to me? I don't even know you that good. And why didn't you get in the bus?"

She told me everything from how passengers started complaining that it was late because the bus had to beat the curfew enforced by terai rebels. Nepal was in the verge of fighting another civil war so it was not their fault. I couldn't let the passengers get hurt just because I had to take shit. But I didn't understand why she waited for me.

"Umm. Because, I didn't want to leave you alone. And I didn't know how to contact you. Aand..."

"And?" What could she probably say?

"And you were becoming my favorite writer. How could I leave you here alone?"

I wanted to remind her that her fiance is dead but I didn't a) because I could sense that she was ignoring the tragedy, maybe it was her way to cope with it, denying that it happened; b) because I didn't want to see a girl cry in the middle of nowhere and I did not want to be alone. Besides, we had other small details to worry about. Like,

"Where the hell are our luggages?"

"What? I...ummm...we are..." She started stammering.

"What the hell?" I was furious.

"I forgot." She made those puffy eyes like she was going to cry.

I was tired of her crude stupidity. I was mad at her but I chose to channel my anger somewhere else.

I sat on the bench that faced the road and started repeating to myself, 'Everything is going to be alright.'

A minute later, a familiar perfume enveloped me from the behind. It was her. She sat beside me.

"You know the driver said that there is another bus from the same company that will come after 2 hours and we can get into it and reach our stop. We just have to show our tickets. We can always collect our luggages from the counter. There is nothing to worry about."

So, I became the girl who was going to cry in the middle of nowhere.

Before letting myself be soothingly consoled by the girl whom I didn't know, I checked my wallet for the tickets and they were there.

"See, there is nothing to worry about." She smiled at me when she said that.

I smiled back at her. The hatred was surprisingly subsiding. But, I still hated her. I was not sure.

"Your fiance died." I often wonder if my ability to speak is a curse or a boon.

"You know, you might think I am a psychopath but this is the best day of my life."

I chose not to utter any word. She asked me to comfortably set my shoulder so that she could rest her head. I did whatever she asked. I was afraid. Now, there were two persons who were sure that she killed her fiance, her mother-in-law and I.

It was a miserable experience. My right shoulder turning numb was a misery and at the same time her hair that smelled like jasmine was holding me hostage to this equally weird but beautiful feeling. The hatred turned into a mixture of dread and fear. I was sitting with an accused killer.

"Are you listening?" I suddenly noticed how beautiful her voice was. Maybe poison tastes sweet.

"Uh-huh." I tried my best to not let her sense the fear in me.

"Thank You."

"Why?"

"Actually, I always wanted to travel with that blog-guy which I knew was impossible. I cannot still remember what his name was, Sangad or something. Though, the point being I always wanted to travel with a writer. I am amused by how they can create anything with the words they have. Damn, I am being cheesy." She giggled at her joke. It's the killer who makes the most convincing lie.

"Uh-huh."

And all of a sudden she turned serious, her head was becoming heavier and heavier, "I prayed everyday that he died. I am an MBBS student. I know hundred different ways to kill a person. And, yet I couldn't kill him. Maybe you are not supposed to kill what makes you suffer. Society orders you to worship them."

The food poisoning was back.

"I tried giving him wrong medicine for his sinus. I tried hundred different things. He was death proof."

I was paralyzed.

"You may wonder why?"

"You mean why did I meet you?" I thought.

"I aced the entrance result. I broke records. I got scholarship for studying MBBS in a reputed college in the capital. I remember how happy I was that day. My dad bought home boxes of sweets to celebrate my triumph. I went door to door distributing sweets and collecting my blessings. And, then I met him. It was a strange moment."

"You were in love. But you went to the capital and found a new lifestyle that you deserved which your back warded fiance couldn't afford. Since you were engaged with him, you were left with no option but to Murder him or pay someone to murder him. You bitch." Of course I kept it to myself.

"It still hurts when I remember that cold day. He left me drenched in his sweat. He left me for dead. I couldn't make sense of what happened to me. But when I came to senses in the intensive unit of the hospital, I was informed that I was raped and left for dead."

My shoulder started melting. I was confused at the moment. Like her, I couldn't make sense of what she was telling me.

"Since, we were a reputed family, his and mine. They decided to resolve it internally without any publicity. The decision was that the rapist marries the victim. Classic cultural solution."

I was hit with a blow.

Sometimes I wonder what a hypocrite our society can be. Masculinity is a responsibility, I always thought, and respecting the ability of other gender like you respect yours, but what we do is we make it an excuse for suppression. Misogyny is a human right that our society proudly assigns. Look at how quickly I deduced that she was the one who wronged. We protect a man at the cost of lives of thousands of women.

"Justice suddenly becomes flexible when it has to act against women. He tried to kill me. He raped me and the society says I have to look after him by being a responsible wife. Thanks to my scholarship, I could try convincing my parents to not marry me for the moment and let me complete my studies to which they didn't agree but my fiance, who heard the conversation, himself came with the solution about being engaged until my studies end. Besides he too was a year away from completing his masters. I thank him for that."

I was speechless.

"But the trouble wasn't over. He came and visited me. He demanded his doses of Sex with his future wife. I obliged. I was afraid of what he could do. I turned hopeless after realizing that God especially protects wrongdoers. He raped me everyday. Our respective families didn't think so." She silently started sobbing. My shoulder was melting with her tears. She didn't want me to know she was crying but I knew. I wanted to say to her that everything will be alright but I wasn't sure. It is funny how hard we try to lie to ourselves by consoling people who are in unfathomable pain without even experiencing what they are going through.

She fell asleep on my shoulder while I was there melting and falling in love with the poetry this strange journey introduced me with and I didn't even know her name.

Closure

"I am sorry for being so vulnerable." She said before we boarded the bus that arrived way past two hours. She was probably embarrassed of her confession.

"It is okay. But, I must tell that it stinks a lot. You drooled all over my shoulder when you were asleep."

"Oh God. I am so sorry. Did I?"

"Do you think the stain will go?"

"Well, yes. I am so embarrassed."

Before I could say anything the TC interrupted to pitch in this awfully disturbing information that there were no seats left so we might have to either stand throughout the journey or sit on the floor.

"Oh Shit!" I looked at her.

"How many times do you want me to apologize tonight?"

"There will not be enough time left." I was angry.

I decided to just sit on the floor by leaning against the pole at the end of the bus. She decided to sneak up beside me and lean against the foundation of the seat by my side.

It was an awful experience. I couldn't feel my spine as the journey progressed. She, on the other hand, was asleep. I was surprised at how she even managed to close her eyes in that uncomfortable space.

It was going good until she decided to bury her face on the floor of the bus. I quickly helped her from almost kissing the floor. Every time I pulled my hand back she would fall back to the floor. She was asleep the whole time while I was protecting her face from touching the ground.

I couldn't carry on that charade anymore and I was tired and sleepy. At that moment, when my ability to make healthy decisions was compromised, I decided to pull her towards me so that she could rest her head on my chest. She basically slept comfortably on me while I was leaning against the pole that remained cold the entire night.

I cleaned her face gently, something inside me told me to, and slept resting my head against hers.

An hour later I decided that I could not sleep anymore. The decision was followed by a cold sensation on my chest. She was drooling again.

I looked at her. I was amused by how peaceful she was. Here I was complaining about not getting a window seat and she was there living a hellish nightmare. I gave her the right to drool all over my chest.

I couldn't help but notice her rough cheek which had been a victim to the tedious schedule in hospital. I was amused by how blinded I was to not fall for her at first glance. If I had, maybe it would only remain a speculative attraction. Now, I knew her and I was strangely finding myself falling in love with what I hated about her.

She suddenly moved. It was her left cheek's turn to take a rest. I took the opportunity to wipe the saliva off her right cheek.

'How do I tell you that I have fallen for how weird you are? How do I tell that I am going to miss that awkwardness between us? How do I tell how ugly you are and yet more beautiful than the rest of the world? How do I tell?' These thoughts were running my conscience and replacing my sleep with an impractical dream. It was not a movie for me to sum up my convictions and confirm that I am in love. It had just been 10 hours. It didn't work that way. It never did.

"How do I tell you how foolish I was to search for words to scribble few poems when they had always been inside you? Maybe the best poems are never supposed to be written. How do I tell I love you for you may take it as a sympathy when it is the strength in you I have fallen for? The more I let myself dissolve in you, the more I make myself confused. Maybe sometimes 'I love you' doesn't work." I gently whispered into her ear. It was unnecessary but I wanted her soul to hear. Maybe I was saddened by the fact that my feelings would be left unheard.

She took my hand and wrapped herself with it as if to acknowledge what I whispered. I obliged.

She was the one asleep and I was the one who was dreaming.

The rush inside the bus woke me up. The passengers in the front row were moving their luggages. Their station had arrived and ours was an hour far away. I suddenly realized a subtle heaviness on my chest and I bowed down to take a look.

"Good morning, sleepy head."

"When did you wake up?" I asked.

"An hour ago."

"And you are still resting against my chest?" My ability to speak officially surpassed my ability to think.

"Well, I figured, what the hell? I did it for 4 straight hours and what good would a couple of hours long regrets would do? By the way How did we? I mean, how did I?"

I told her everything. She had no clue what to say.

"Well, I had never slept that peacefully in years. I cannot complain."

"The writers have the warmest chest because their heart is always working, I guess."

"Well, that was cheesy."

"I know." She smiled while she said that.

An hour later, we were in the counter and glad that our luggages were fine. We looked inside them to confirm. After being assured that nothing was lost we decided to give ourselves time and had a light breakfast in a nearby cafe. It is funny how she doesn't talk while eating. I wished she had. I made the payment.

"So, this is it?" she asked before leaving the counter.

"Unless you want to live that dreadful night, again?" I laughed and prayed that she understood that I didn't mean it. It was one of the best 16 hours of my life.

"Well. I am sorry about the drooling part."

"It is okay."

"And endangering our luggages."

"That you should be."

"I am sorry." I could see her eyes turning watery.

"How many times are you going to apologize?" I asked. She looked at me with the same puffy eyes.

"I am sorry to have not found you earlier."

"What do you mean?" I was taken by surprise.

"It was fun to be lost with you."

"Well, Thank you." I could only muster up those words of thanks when I should have hugged her and said that I would be glad to be lost with her again.

I hired a rickshaw for her.

"Journey makes you

And distances break you

For distances are calculated past

because you always know

that the journeys betray

Because they tend to never last." She quoted the poem from the blog before the rickshaw started.

"By the way, that guy from the blog."

"What about him?"

"His name is not Sangad or something. It is Angad Shakya."

"Wait, how do you know?" She was surprised.

"We lose ourselves to future

By trading the memories of past

We lose track of being

Because it tend to never last." I quoted my blog.

She looked back at me as the rickshaw left. I kept on waving wondering why I did not ask her name. But then I realized, I was always hers because it was now 'Sangad or something's turn to have a crush on her in return and wait for God to sign me up for another great journey with her.

I decided I shall create poems out of her till then. But then again, I should not, I thought. For My poems are the loneliest thing in the world and I always want to be with her and not leave her alone in the pages of digital diary .

Image Courtesy:www.sociopower.net