A Love, Deferred

Almost two years have passed since I wandered in those streets of emphatic emotions, those pavements filled with music and consumed the trophic scrolls of curiosity and romance.

The world ambled on despite its quandaries while I frequented those mammoth sized, magnificent halls of the library to hide my inner stirrings and agony. These halls, once a commonplace for Zenodotus of Ephesus, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Aristarchus of Samos and minds of literature, science, history, and rhetoric were grey enough to quell my blasphemous tempests of fits and cries. After Ptolemy VIII’s reign of unstable and intolerable political environment, most of the scholars had fled this place of knowledge for better avenues and trifling people were allowed to run this library and organise the last remaining scrolls into a systematic and cerebral bibliography. My task was to be the hands and feet of my supervisor who unlike Callimachus was wearisome and had his last drop of intuition drained out by the quotidian of these dark, damp grey walls. The intellectual centre of Hellenistic world, the Great Library of Alexandria was just another maze of shelves and alleys which I had to negotiate every day with the miasma slowly creeping in. My task today was to check if the scrolls kept in the Hall of Literature were catalogued properly and if not, rearrange them according to the Pinakes devised by Callimachus.

“Oh Alexandria, how much I miss you!” I muttered, wiping off my tears as I pushed the cart of scrolls along its path.

It had already been two hours since I was in the Hall of Literature cataloguing the scrolls according to the system and the afternoon heat was starting to be unbearable. My forehead was sweating profusely, and I had to be careful of not letting those drops fall on the papyrus. Surely Homer’s Odyssey did not want to be drenched in my nescient brine. I wanted to take a break by finishing off this last section and go outside to not die of the suffocation. Just as I put the last scroll in the shelf, a small piece of papyrus fell from the top shelf, drifting and levitating in the air until it hit the ground, inanimate. It wasn’t rolled into a scroll like usual but folded neatly into half with an expertise of geometer. I picked up the unnamed papyrus and set it down on the wooden table with extreme care. Surely some other worker had stuffed it in between the rolls or someone was secretly tearing the scrolls and stealing them. It wasn’t new but my mind run amok with different possibilities. I unfolded the piece of papyrus so I could see it in its entirety. I went closer and it did not look like a piece from any literary work or poetry, it was a letter. A letter written in one of the most beautiful handwritings I had ever seen and rather than reading the words first, I was spellbound by the swells and inflections of the individual alphabets in the letter. A letter without a writer’s name in the Great Library of Alexandria, a little miscreant in the company of the highest rhetoric. I was at sea, but this seemed like a small, yet enthralling boat in which I could start my own new Odyssey.

The world with its searing heat was pouring on the roofs and walls of this place while I fixated my eyes on the terms I was dealt with. The world around me, a Euclidean sphere was closing on me quickly as I started reading the words with Alexandria as my heliocentric axis.

I opened my eyes with some difficulty as all the light from the centre had blinded me.

Alexandria, a girl in her mid-twenties, an ambitious woman made up of all the ambitious things a scholar would have. Proficient in history with Masters in Ancient Literature, tall, rigidly built by her passion for hiking during summers, dexterous in driving a stick and assured with her words. This summer, she was travelling in India to continue her study on Indian literature and learn about the culture as most people from West do. She did not have a boyfriend or a husband but her disposition towards love was phlegmatic.

Amadeus, a boy in his mid-twenties, an ambitious man made up of all the ambitious things a system constructs. Proficient in archaeology with fame attached to his work for the discovery of the true age of the Harappan civilization, tall, skinny due to his high metabolism and activity, dexterous in flying a plane and loquacious with his words. This summer, he was spending time in India with his colleagues to work on the documentation of the artifacts as most archaeologists do. He did have a girlfriend a few years ago but his disposition towards love was equivocal.

Alexandria, a free-spirited girl but innately religious was wandering the city of Haridwar after meeting with one of the professors from Banaras Hindu University for her project on Indian literature. For her Haridwar was a dense, unclean city and hodgepodge of smells and sounds but somehow it resonated with her deep spiritual innards and gave her time to think about how she could connect literature and history. This evening, the weather was cooler than the usual summer heat and she wanted to spend time on the banks of the river Ganga, seeing the way men draped in orange robes, foreheads coloured with vermillion and ash, Rudraksha beads around their necks, hands and bellies worship the Ganges. Lighted lamps floating away, carrying their secret sins. Only if she had a good quality camera to capture the lamps serenading gently on the immortal mother which nurtured and nourished million sons and daughters. Just as she was watching the sadhus perform the aarti, a form of worship with one hand on her knee, she felt a strong presence above her head.

She looked up and saw a man, tall, skinny, and carrying a camera and smiling at the ceremony. She thought to herself, ‘Maybe I can ask him to take a few pictures for me as well? Or should I?’

The boy, Amadeus looked down at Alexandria and smiled and continued to click pictures whilst tapping his feet on the ground in tune with the bells and claps. ‘She looks cute and seems to enjoy the ceremony. Should I sit beside her on the step and watch the ceremony?’, wondered Amadeus.

A not-so-hot summer loo blew across the plain and a few lamps tilted and capsized in the water, albeit a few hearts did too. Alexandria sensing the shadow over her took the purse which was lying on the step beside her in her hands making some space. Amadeus with a little hesitation, straightened his pants and sat down with the space she had made. Maybe that was the space he needed or one anyone ever needs. The winds from the East kept blowing on their faces gently while they silently watched the religious passage of play. Chants in a language ancient than their experience in olden things, a circular dance of lights burning from the purified butter and sounds perfectly dissonant in their individual tones while these two characters exchange nothing but silent words. One sitting with his back tout and smiling at the evening revelries while the other folding her hands in prayer. They did not have to run or chase or fall yet, to feel each other.

She looked at Amadeus after a few minutes of consecrated silence and said, ‘All the books and literature in the world, lexicographers scribbling their pens every year and here we are, witnessing something which can’t be described by words. I am Alexandria by the way and please do not call me Alex!’

Amadeus, surprised by this sudden verbosity replied, ‘I am pretty sure there will always be someone, somewhere in some other time who could chronicle this beautiful evening in a small piece of paper. It’s nice to meet you, Alexandria. I am Amadeus by the way and please do not judge me if I am not Mozart.’

The not-so-hot summer wind had transcended into a cool breeze as the evening passed fluently while the two characters engaged into the traditional yet dignified conversation of getting to know each other with their life goals and dreams interspersed between lines of communication. Alexandria who had always liked to talk while walking made sure that Amadeus kept pace with her, not just conversationally but anatomically too. Amadeus kept clicking pictures of the Haridwar landscape in between moments of silence or when Alexandria became too chatty.

‘Do you know what the best part is of being in places like Haridwar where the bulk of righteousness would challenge the volume of water flowing through Ganges?’, asked Amadeus.

‘I believe the people would sin a lot here because they have a jail free card or should I say a jail free river,’ chuckled Alexandria as she shivered with a little cold shock running through her back.

‘No, you could be right, but I think it’s the number of blessings you get when you just walk from point A to point B.’

‘Oh, that’s just for the money that they want to get out of your pocket,’ said Alexandria, citing a little doubt over these practices despite her deep faith in religion.

‘Money or no money, I distinctly remember 10 people blessing us with either good health, good fortune, or good married life since we started walking. Even for money, I don’t think people would bless us -people from another country so much and they definitely wouldn’t do it in the West.’

‘Are you too naïve or are you blinded by optimism of the future?’

‘You are asking a man who has spent the last five years digging the earth for past relics,’ smiled Amadeus as he answered the question knowing it was going to be an interesting evening ahead if they kept walking and talking.

‘The garden is beautiful for you I guess even if there aren’t fairies hiding in the bushes, right?’ she asked while also nudging him a little on the side.

Alexandria thinking about the last sentence, looked at the steps at the bottom of these temples by the river. It was already 8 pm and there was a slight mist of the Ganga which had seemed to blur a few details with its ragged veils. The reddish glow of lanterns, the buoyant lamps on the river and shadows escaping from the illuminated windows while a street performer played high notes on his pair of manjeera. The river crashed at the bottommost steps of the ghats and somehow the evening lacked none of winter poetry. By accident, her fingers brushed against Amadeus’s fingers and that surprised her. Apologising to him, she kept on walking without saying for a while.

‘Am I walking too close to her that our hands are touching each other so frequently or maybe this is the first time she is realising that?’

As they climbed out from the ghat and were heading towards the city and its normal din, Amadeus asked if she wanted to try the ‘rabdi’, a famous Indian dessert common in these parts.

‘I have heard about it from the professor I met but haven’t tried it. What is it made of? Looks like something from milk.’

Amadeus, possessing a sweet tooth answered, ‘It’s made from sweet, condensed milk with nuts and saffron as its toppings. It’s quite yummy and could be served hot or cold depending on the weather. Let’s try some at this local shop.’

The local confectioner or ‘halwai’ gave them two cups of rabdi with wooden spoons to eat them with. She hadn’t tried such an immensely sweet thing before, and she finished one cup even before Amadeus could finish half of his. Unable to resist herself, she got herself another one and savoured that one too in no time. Amadeus who had just finished one cup, wiping his face from the rabdi laughed at her and asked if she wanted more.

‘Right now, all I want is this and maybe this sweet Indian confectioner to go! Look at how lovingly he’s looking at us and he feels so proud that we love his delicacy.’

‘Maybe he likes your money!’ joked Amadeus, citing her earlier argument.

For the last one and a half hour, he hadn’t noticed Alexandria in the way he was noticing her now. The city commotion would slowly engulf them in a few moments, the smell of flowers and the sounds of lamentation would fill the air and they would go out in the darkness. This evening, adrenaline pumping through his veins while sparks flowed through his fingers and his gaze fixated on her relishing the rabdi with unvexed joy. Her face, sharp with features and the glint in her eyes when she to smiled or talked was like streak of gold and amethyst to him. She was beautiful and interesting, but Amadeus was blue.

‘Under the stack of scrolls of endless memories, will you and I, just talk and walk and melt into this dazzling night?’ soliloquized Amadeus.

As Amadeus was paying the money to the confectioner which she wanted to split, she observed him. Such an interesting name he has and quite an interesting person too. The wind tonight seemed full of echoes, echoes of his truthful personality in a place where being a charlatan is generally appreciated. Amongst the colours of orange and theology and sounds of heavy propaganda this evening, came a man equipped with a camera and sat beside me to observe and ruminate. Amadeus with his brown eyes and dense, curled hair was handsome and beautiful. His face, sharp and the flicker in his eyes when he gazed into infinity without talking was like a deep blue sea, boisterous and undulating.

‘In this vagueness of life, will you Amadeus my last thought of this evening be the first thought in the morning?’ questioned Alexandria to herself without using words.

The timekeeper, wearied from the day’s swelter walked on while painting yet one more shade of blue on blue, one stroke at a time on his beguiling nocturne.

The alarm blared loudly as soon as the clock struck 9:30 am on Amadeus’s phone. Unlike most people of his time, he did not snooze or silent his phone but stopped the alarm from ringing and opened his eyes to a new day. Despite reading about not using phone after instantly waking up to check one’s emails or messages, Amadeus tapped on his screen to see if last night’s exchange of digits with Alexandria had brought any further correspondence. No messages yet and he sighed. ‘Should I message her to know if she has any plans today or maybe have breakfast together?’ thought Amadeus while getting up from bed to get ready. He quickly emptied his bladder first while putting music on his phone as he would do every day. Looking into the mirror, he said,’ Even if I sleep for 10 hours without waking up, why does my face look like it hasn’t woken up yet?’ He was feeling a little anxious today after waking up. Normally he would dance on some catchy music while brushing his teeth, but he was a little disquieted today. Sketching up imaginary scenarios, thinking of sentences he would say or actions he would do, he kept his thoughts churning while his teeth were massaged by the electric toothbrush. It came cunningly without any forewarning; he felt a little out. He asked looking in the mirror as wild horses ran in a carousel in his stomach and his heartbeat raced up,’ Is it a false alarm or something the matter with me?’ The electric toothbrush stopped and was put back in its place, water splashed across his face and the chain of thought stopped. And then, it blossomed.

Alexandria called him,’ Do you want to have breakfast together before I head out to meet a couple of people for my research project today? I might not be able to meet in the evening today as I am planning to have dinner with an old friend of mine from university. What do you say?’

A full thirty seconds later, he replied,’ Yes, I would love to. Give me 30 minutes to get ready. See you soon!’

‘So, you see there is a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence, which measures the amount of light emitted from mineral grains as these sediment grains were deposited and shielded from further light or heat exposure and basically that is how we dated events for the Indus Valley Civilization’, explained Amadeus while eating his bread toast when Alexandria asked him about his famous discovery for the Indus Valley Civilization.

‘That is mighty interesting. So, Indus Valley is older than we thought initially. You did fill up a significant gap in our understanding of the Harappan civilization’, exclaimed Alexandria.

‘A gap of 2500 years. But I feel I have been wrongly accoladed for this discovery. My good colleague from IIT Kharagpur, Anindya Sarkar should have got all the claps and praises.’

‘I don’t think you disagree with all the plaudits you get from the world of archaeology. You friend, Sarkar certainly deserves credit too, but you aren’t too self-righteous yourself. So, you can either sit here and drink your tea with me or go on social media and broadcast your pruned role in this discovery.’

‘A very honest response, but I like it’, remarked Amadeus.

Alexandria sipped her coffee, smiling to his response and retorted with another question,’ So how did the civilization decline? I am pretty sure you must have some theory.’

Rather being exhausted with her incessant questions, he answered promptly, ‘The usual, aggrandized by the change in urbanization technique. Monsoons became capricious and people shifted their agriculture from large, grained cereals like wheat and barley to monsoon resistant crops like millets and rice. Once a mature and community-based Harappa collapsed to a smaller, household Harappa and hubris settled on the ruins.’

‘So much through those youthful years, now anointed with water, not from heavens but tears in her eyes. Oh Indus, I wish I could give you my life to add to yours or simply erase those lines from your face, though I shall always feel thirsty’, composed Alexandria with a quaver in her voice.

‘Did you just come up with that?’ asked Amadeus.

‘I guess. But I need to rush now. See you later Amadeus,’ as she quickly gulped her coffee and took a banana with her.

The summer wind blew on her burnished face without any hurtle as she listened to Dr Iyengar, her old friend from academia at the table facing the river, Ganga. The whole day had been spent discussing about the literary theory of ancient India and how the Western literature and criticism differed from this untapped resource of Eastern fortune. Evening had come rather languidly for Alexandria as she had hopped and skipped over Dr Iyengar’s magnificent insights on Indian literature. Despite her passion for learning about ancient literature, her usual enthusiasm for listening had been occupied with something else. She had checked her phone a hundred times for a text or a call from someone and this was something she hadn’t felt in a long time. A little commotion in her daily life of immense literary monotone wasn’t something she had expected to occur so soon after meeting someone for a couple of times. She kept thinking about how she abruptly ended the conversation at breakfast and contemplated if she could have just planned to meet for the next day. ‘What if he felt bad that I told him he wasn’t too self-righteous?’ wondered Alexandria as she kept listening aimlessly to Dr Iyengar. She looked around and saw Iyengar’s face and saw how his eyes were shining as he talked about one of the critical tenets of Indian literature – rasadhvani. Men and their passionate eyes were one of the things which Alexandria found extremely attractive. Her stolid belief in the concept of romance hadn’t died down despite not being perturbed in a while and she knew her vacillations weren’t going to make her dizzy but swoon her in an abyss of uncertain passion. In a moment’s flash, her heartbeats raced as she kept folding the napkin on her lap nervously. That heart filled box, chimed in the summer slumber as the scrolls of her fathomless library unfolded one by one. Alexandria, a library of archived longings.

Poetry, the liberation of the individual from the wider realm as Aristotle claimed drifted, unimpressed. As feet traced its steps back to where the heart resided, poets converged to create the world it saw and experienced opposed to that of the “unacknowledged legislator of the world”. Steps slowed down as the kavirao’s (“poet”) heart was interpreted by the sahrdaya (“proper critic”). Bait Bazi ensued, a form of Shakespearean stichomythia.

‘How was your day?’

‘It was good, a lot of interesting things I learnt from Dr Iyengar.’

‘Your old friend from the university?’

‘Yes. A beast of Indian literature.’

‘Ah I see. A beast.’

‘Umm, how was your day?’

‘I roamed around the city, took some pictures of the sites I thought to be interesting.’

‘Any places of interest?’

‘There were a few but I don’t think it’s of your concern.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know if you would have time to see them.’

‘Probably true. Or maybe?’ she lingered on contemplating her choice of words.

‘Or? Maybe leave it,’ moaned Amadeus as he wasn’t sure of his behaviour.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked as Amadeus looked a little faded.

‘Yes, I am. Are you?’ he responded.

‘Do you want to get rabdi again? I had dinner but I feel exhausted of the heat.’

‘Sure, we can walk till that place again.’

Poets were only good with words, so they made sure not to pull out any more knives.

‘Amadeus, do you ever miss your parents? I wish my dad was here with me as I am sure he would have loved to travel this part of the world with me.’

‘I miss my mother a lot but why do you ask me?’ asked bemused Amadeus.

‘I was talking with Iyengar about he interpreted ancient literature and I segued into a chain of thought as he was talking. Don’t you think our parents are always there somewhere, hidden in our interpretations of the world?’

‘Every artifact that I have dug and every site that I have scraped, despite my scientific approach, I tend to interpret things in a way that is not explicable. A childhood rationale I must say. But I do agree with you on some level.’

Alexandria, gaining her usual tempo,’ Every time I read Shakespeare or Plato, I feel there’s a deep sense of tragedy or comedy hidden in those lines. But I always feel that my interpretation falls short of a literary critic’s expertise as I tend to explain the dynamics with my parental upbringing. The so-called literary devices would not animate my mind if not for my dad recounting stories of his past while I sat in his lap watching the birds chirp. His change in voice when his fictional self, encountered a majestic lion in the Black Forest or when his eyes lit up as he wondered how Noah navigated the choppy waters of the apocalypse.’

‘I believe the love or hate of our parents shapes our vision of the scientific discoveries we make. For some it’s a journey inward and for some it’s a journey inward but filled with gastronomic metaphors,’ exclaimed Amadeus.

‘Was your mother a good storyteller?’ she asked as their steps synced and the distance between them shortened.

Amadeus looked at her and stopped for a second and then he continued. ‘She was indeed. You know I used to be this very skinny kid who had eyes billowing out of his face and ribs out there for some art deco. For some reason, eating regularly and healthily wasn’t on top of my list and I had to be sat down by my mom to have food. She would ready a morsel with one hand and hold my arm with other. But the only way to keep me still was to narrate some story, either from history or mythology. She would always have stories with her, sometimes she would repeat them but narrate them with a different flavour and mood and sometimes she would read them from a magazine or newspaper.’

‘That is quite beautiful.’

‘She was an equivalent of literary guru but an astute tactician as well. Quite well versed in grammar and composition.’

‘This whole day after listening to Iyengar, I felt my understanding of the literature was quite incomplete but now I feel most of us are quite acquainted with the doctrine.’

Amadeus accidently touched her hand and she stopped. He asked,’ What do you mean?’

‘We have always been taught in our Western school of thought that poetry and drama are to be interpreted on an individual scale as a tool to evict our emotions, but do we actually do that?’

‘I guess to exclude one from society is impossible even if one tries to write or compose with blindfold on his eyes and earmuffs on his ears. Life imitates art, probably didactically too as a lot of critics in this part of the world say.’

‘The papers that I read, the artifacts that you dig would make no sense if there was no metre or rhyme to it, right? If we it was all too individualistic, wouldn’t it be singular and boring? A basic, bland dish with no spices.’

‘You are right. If everything just had a stanzaic regularity with all the grammar rules hardbound, it would just be another set of words.’

‘A word with no memory and a poem without any feeling. I mean if I did not ever feel loved or grieved by my childhood experiences, would I be able to understand the true essence of those words?’ she inquired.

‘Love yields the amorous sentiment, courage the heroic mode,’ exclaimed Amadeus.

‘Absolutely true! Did you know that the Indian sage Valmiki, once heard two Krauncha birds, I guess type of cranes mating in the forest? Tradition has that when the male of that pair was shot down by a hunter, Valmiki heard the grieving of the female bird and found it to be metrically perfect that he expressed her pain in the form of a perfect couplet.’

Amadeus on listening to this story, ‘A poem with these emotions, spices of these stylistic word play, and sense of seating is an actual purgation of emotion.’

As they had reached the rabdi maker, Alexandria slowed down and said, ‘Revelation lies in the heart of the hearer. Only if he gets the sound of sense.’

The initial rhetorical retort which was filled with irritation and cursory questions was replaced with a perfect couplet. Their whole day, engulfed in different activities had passed without them thinking about each other for no more than a few seconds but those seconds came repeatedly. Both, a little hesitant, a little egoistic did not make the first move until one of them eventually gave into the auguries. One did not like that she did not plan a dinner with him, and one did not like that he did not give her call or text the whole day. And yet when their fingers brushed against each other, they breathed heavy. Alexandria and Amadeus, two very special people in a summer night under the lights of the confectioner were homesick. Under the weight of the world, under the burden of science and the constructs of imagination, they missed each other.

Night embraced them in its arms as their speculation grew into a narrative. The narrative which rebounded like a ping pong ball had to settle down near the banks of Ganges as the embrace became tighter and warmer.

Alexandria sat down beside Amadeus as they weren’t too tired to go home, and they felt the need to be beside each other for a little longer. A little hesitant but more confident with her actions, Alexandria sat a little closer to Amadeus. She nudged him asking, ‘So Amadeus, tell me do you have a special someone in life or did you have one?’

Amadeus smiled looking at her and answered rather rapidly. ‘I had a girlfriend a few years back but have been single for a while now. What about you?’

‘I have been single too since the inception of time, though gave it a try during school. Guys never stuck around or maybe I never asked them out properly.’

Laughing at this, he said, ‘So the great literary expert, Alexandria never had a boyfriend! Wow! Not even a casual little experiment or is that too strong for you?’

‘I have always been level-headed with what I want but I haven’t just put my head in books all day. Love is what I found in those books, other things I got whenever I felt I needed them.’

‘Love, all those nights with the juggling of the phone between my hands’, he exclaimed throwing a small pebble in the water.

‘Then why did you stop juggling your phone Amadeus? Love too strong for you now?’, she riposted while giving him another nudge on his shoulder.

‘Love wasn’t too strong for me. I never understood the issue, still can’t.’

Hearing this, she could feel that the tones around him had changed a little and he needed someone who could listen. ‘I’d be glad if you vomit your issue to me, emotional nausea isn’t something you would want.’ As soon as he heard the term ‘vomit’, he broke out laughing and let out a long breath looking into the sky of a million stars twinkling gently.

‘I thought I dated a douchebag when she broke up and me and my friends partied to “All the girls that break your heart”. Little by little, I stopped loving her, started laughing it out with people, thinking that I had forgotten her. But sometimes your heart breaks in the right way. Sometimes the hatred you cultivate in that fortress might have a small, red rose bursting through the brick.’ He stopped talking for a while.

Alexandria looked far in the distance and put her hand around his shoulders. Sometimes in the wilderness of the world, all one needs is a hand around their shoulder. He continued,’ The strange truth is that I loved her for a longer period than I did during the time we were together. Worried about her, ached for that missing piece of puzzle which had eluded me. Dug deeper with my scientific tools, delved into material relationships and at times bared my soul for all to see. Nausea as you said attacked me and, in that heart-shaped box, a little flicker of hope started rising again.’

‘That must have been tough for you Amadeus. I can understand people thinking you to be all brawn and gnarly, but I had really wished for an emotional person inside. I did not know you actually had physical manifestations of your emotional anxiety otherwise I would have been careful with my choice of words. But I am sure a lot of people would have told you how to deal with it and focus on yourself rather than on a relationship which was eating you. Your vulnerability right now is something which is quite rare these days as people tend to either show it off or hide them in their deepest recesses. You say you created a fortress around you, so what kind of rose burst through the shackles?’

He stood up and grabbed her hand which was falling from his shoulder. Amadeus looked at her and replied, ‘Between my shadow and soul, I walked on. The land infiltrated by the darkest weeds can only be cleared if you start walking ahead. She wasn’t perfect, never will be. Unlike switches, I realised I could not turn love on or off, neither pain. I walked on, carrying my heart with a strong sense of love rather than hatred. As I looked back on my travails, the weed infested land had fertilized into a small garden of roses. And yeah sometimes, talking to the right people, reading, and watching movies also kept me entertained while I walked.’

Alexandria looked up at him and saw a glimmer of light as he spoke those last words. It wasn’t his face or his expressions. It wasn’t even his voice or how he still had her hand held while speaking. It was what he was in that moment, a moment created by a million events which had nurtured him. He wasn’t shy of using words to express himself and he always kept his science with him in case his emotions failed. People have lost their minds over love, some have become brilliant writers and artists in the hope of finding love through art, some have killed themselves while others have gone on a killing spree. But here was an ambitious man, working his way through the scientific community without any restraint who didn’t go mad like Heracles and who didn’t lose faith. Despite the heartbreak he never thought he would feel, he did one simple thing – have enough courage to trust “love” one more time. Always one more time.

The cadence of perfect symmetry in that beautiful letter had exhausted itself after multiple iterations of the planet’s cycles of apsides around the Sun. No story however fictionalised, is always inveigled by the indiscriminate and sudden ad libitum as papyrus transforms to qubits of information. The perfect cataloguer gives way to the extemporaneous library.

The flight to Boston was late by 2 hours due to inclement weather and air traffic issues. After a few months of rummaging through India’s literary history, Alexandria had decided to go back to Boston. The last few weeks had been hectic, and she had to finish cataloguing her findings and analysis. She was excited to submit her report to her advisor on how Indian literature had a different locus point than the Western literature. All her life, she had been taught to use literary devices to purge her emotions, but the last few months had taught her a way to use those same literary devices and liberate her surrounding society. From the simplest belief of composing perfectly structured couplets by its rhythms to cleanse the air, which people call “mantra” to the poets such as Janaka who set standards for the world to follow, she was awed by the religious and daily interpretation of these texts while also feeling a dearth of literary IQ to analyse them. But that’s where the inadequacy stopped. The cadence of the perfect symphony which had engulfed her past few months had been broken by fugues of her internal turmoil. Amadeus, his innocent eyes, and his even more innocent unguarded expressions. Amadeus had unravelled himself in the process of unearthing those old ruins of history and legacy whilst unveiling something that Alexandria had mysteriously wrapped with her phlegmatic approach towards life. Despite being happy with him whenever they talked, whenever they walked to the rabdi shop and whenever they had those academic conversations, she was ambling away from the library of her most feared catalogue. Without any formal conversation, she had decided to run away from Amadeus leaving for him something that needed opening. As she looked at her phone to check her flight status and notifications from messages from her friends, she clutched her fist tightly. Her nails weren’t sharp enough to pierce her skin, but she could feel them trying to break that thin cloak of tranquillity. Her language was perfect and her way of making conversation was always semantically perfect and veritable. Even her text messages to her friends were full of words which they rarely used in their day-to-day lives, but they sounded good when she used them. Her verbosity wasn’t cruel or overbearing, it was necessary tutoring for people around her. Her letters which were made up those atypical words were beautifully handcrafted from cultures around the world and her readings of hundreds of books and materials. The letters vocalised by her were as thin as those papyrus scrolls tightly wound in the dusty, old shelves of that ancient library in one of the greatest cities of the Hellenistic world. But leaving behind a major portion of unspoken letters, she ran away. Despite reading and understanding the use of literature and poetry as a way to emancipate herself, she wanted to fly away to a world, oceans apart. A world where things seemed quicker, the weather colder and her emotions could easily traverse through the fixed lines of metros and trains. America, a world of opportunities was the perfect place for her to run. Beautiful buildings, made with brick and mortar and far and apart at times. There were alleys there where she could jog for her daily run with her mobile strapped to her right arm. A place where there was history but devoid of people. It was the place where she could disappear and whenever she looked back, she could see the depthless sky. A place where the running stats on her phone would match identically with the next person running, albeit her feelings wouldn’t.

The tarmac cleared off for the plane to take off and the checklist of things to cross off for the pilots and ATC. While the tires rubbed off their rubber on the hard tarmac one last time before they were airborne and as the pretty colours of a nation with pretty eyes and emotions faded away into a singular monochrome of grey, she clutched the armrest with her left hand tightly. As her eyes closed with a heavy heart, uncharacteristic of an aerodynamic body she segued reluctantly into the last colloquy she had with Amadeus.

‘You seem a little down since the last few days. Is everything all right with you,’ he asked as they were sitting on the steps of the temple that they had visited earlier. ‘You seem silent, and I feel there’s something wrong, I might be wrong, but I am just saying.’

She looked down at her feet which she was swinging slowly to some inner rhythm. ‘I want to go home now.’ She paused for a while before saying,’ But I have some work to finish here, and I don’t know when I can go back.’

‘Ah I see, home’, he replied with some hidden emotion he didn’t express fully.

‘Yeah, home. But work is also important, and I feel I would miss this place so much. I would miss the constant noise, the constant rambling of people with absolutely no sense at times and I would miss the food so much.’ She pointed to a small boat which was carrying a group of tourists on the river Ganga and said,’ I think I would also miss you Amadeus.’ As soon as she said this, the imaginary boat inside her rocked and she kept looking at those happy tourists on the boat.

The quiver inside her somehow resonated within him with increased amplitude and he could only smile and put her hand on her hand which was rested on the step they were sitting on. ‘You can stay for a few more weeks and we can go back together. At least we can give each other company during the tenuous, long flight to America.’ He did not want to use these words but the murmur inside him muted his actual words. ‘I think I have to say a lot to you, but we can reserve that on the flight.’

She looked at him and wished for a world as happy as that boat on the river Ganga. Small dinghy on rocky waters yet carrying hopes of a million suns inside. ‘I feel I miss my dad and although I didn’t get to spend much time with him once I left home for my dreams, I do want to go back and spend some time with him.’

‘Why didn’t you spend time with him once you left your home for work?’ he asked.

‘The day I left my home, it was probably the toughest thing I had to do in the world. I felt like I was being dragged away from something that I took for granted and my dreams seemed too small at that time. I cried for one complete day, and I felt terrified that I had grown up. But my dreams were too strong, and I knew I had to walk that path riddled with potholes, maybe get kicked down a million times but time would make me strong. Maybe time would render the paint of my walls as just colours and the door of my house as just wood and it surely did. The strength of time is really something else, a Herculean feat.’

He looked at the river slowing hitting the steps of the ghat and leaving flowers at the feet of the divine. Amadeus knew it was her time to flow and hit those spiritual steps and decided to not speak.

‘I became too engrossed in achieving my dreams and I could feel that I was winning the world. But somewhere buried deep within was that small girl who had cried for leaving her home. You had previously asked me if I had fallen in love with someone or not, didn’t you?’

He was a little surprised by that question, but he answered,’ Umm…. yes. You said you got busy with books and had fun along the way, but….’

She cut him short saying,’ I know I had fun along the way, but love was something I kept too reserved for someone I didn’t know.’

Amadeus asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Every time I spent time with a boy or a man, I would think of the love I would give to him. I would imagine myself in these imaginary situations where I would do this and do that with him. But whenever it came to taking the next step, I felt a strong pang in my heart, something like a broken record. I would get out my meter stick and mark the distance between us.’

‘Why do you think you distanced yourself from love, Alexandria?’

‘Most of the times people think it was an evil stepmother or an unloving father who submitted this idea of not being able to fully love someone, but it wasn’t that for me. There was a little voice in my head, one telling me to stay where I was, and everything will fall back to equilibrium.’

‘Ah I see. But what kind of voice was it and what did it say? And how did you explain yourself to the guys, not that you had to explain but I can also feel their helplessness or frustration?’

‘Every time I said goodbye to the people I was getting closer to, I experienced a range of reactions from them. Sometimes it was anger, sometimes it was pity and sometimes it was complete indifference but every time I said goodbye, I died a little. It was a voice which didn’t want to be questioned or which didn’t want to be compromised when it found another voice tugging at its undertones. Since the day I left home, I haven’t looked back. My slow amble became an athlete’s sprint and I felt love weighing me down whenever it presented me with a wonderful opportunity. People say love makes you do powerful things like sacrifice, but I do not want to sacrifice. As for giving justification to people regarding my predicament, I would either take the route of just acting like ‘’I am a kind of go-with-the-flow person so let’s see where it goes’’ or run away in the opposite direction without any warning. Some guys would fall easily for the prospect of sex, and some would walk away from but most importantly leaving me to my natural equilibrium state. Get it?’

All the words he could think of, he tried to eat them before they came out. Amadeus had to control his emotions and he could only say,’ I can understand, Alexandria and you shouldn’t rush yourself into anything you don’t feel comfortable with.’ Saying this, he put his arm around her shoulder and grasped her shoulder to give her support.

‘What if I had to change myself for someone? What if my dreams were too ambitious for someone or more importantly, what if I can’t reciprocate the same kind of love that he felt? People always say that love is the most powerful thing in the world but why does no one say it is damn scary to begin with? The little girl in me feels it would have to again paint those walls of her bedroom and lock herself down in that commitment with no escape. I feel I am paralysed by my defences and memories. My fear of life getting shattered does not give me the permission to be broken, it does not give me permission to be uncertain again. So here I am with my running shoes on, charting my own course, a course I know I will win.’

Alexandria stood up, dusting off her dress and gave her hand to Amadeus who was still sitting down and was lost looking at the horizon. ‘Between the sunny, happy days of Boston to the cold, wintery nights, I ran along the river Charles with my running shoes on. My instincts know that someday that silken net of love will close on me, and I would forever be entangled in its soft, tenacious bonds. Until then, I will run with this fragile masquerade.’

Amadeus looked at her as she finished the sentence and felt that humming of her inner voice banging at the doors of his heart. Her perfect choice of words, her perfect choice of voice intonations and her perfect beauty were too small against her imperfect understanding of love. He could feel that the last few minutes had sucked a little energy out of her and he was now privy to something deep within her which these tranquil waters hauntingly obscured. People, broken hearted and stung bitterly by the vicious bites of love were anxious to fall in love again but here was someone who had never really given herself a chance to be broken. Here was someone who had read a thousand novels and analysed hundreds of fairy tales but had stocked her own leather-bound diary below the thick mattress of fear, waiting for the right time to come. She wasn’t afraid of the world or its nastiness but was afraid of retracing her own steps back to the time she cried. The further she went, the closer she came to her own self. A leaf floating in the will of the wind.

The winds had changed their course as the magnificent creature flew from East to West and the two sets of eyes, one heavy with tears while the other heavy with prayer opened to their new surroundings. The sphere of life spins even when people living on them don’t want it to spin too quickly. Amadeus started helping his juniors from archaeology department catalogue new evidence and Alexandria went to her father’s house to spend some time with him. The constancy of life enriched them again while the domestic pressures kept them busy. Their life, nothing fancy was catalogued like those scrolls in the great library of Alexandria, but their souls sighed with deep echo. In her daily running, there was her usual stillness and his daily talking with people, there was his usual stillness but there was a ringing, a ringing in their stillness.

The summer they had spent together in India despite its intense heat and sweating had passed its innocence to their frequent exchanging of texts and video calls in the autumnal reverence. Unpleasantness hadn’t stuck their friendship yet and yes, they were friends which people with keen eyes and acerbic criticisms of life would ridicule them for. Sentences sometimes morphed into something that they their emotions didn’t agree with but their intercontinental universe was honest. They gave advice to each other, solutions, and cures to their daily struggles of life rather than share their pain or touch with warm, tender hands. Sometimes they would video call each other and listen to other’s moment of despair and remain silent knowing that they were not enough to fulfil each other right now. Their reality was in their powerlessness, their reality was in their care as a friend. They would usually say how they miss each other and always made plans of catching up again. Their immortal enemies, fear and anxiety were kept at bay by their powerful friendship. But deep down they knew something else was brewing. The usual poetic style of conversations had started to become shorter and abrupt. The distance, not the geographical one was starting to act on them. Delays in time and understanding led them to have petty quarrels and the ad libitum had powerfully set in. Daily conversations became a weekly thing. Their hearts ached for each other, but their love wasn’t brave enough to accept their fate. Friendship however strong and respectful had to give way to something even more powerful and indefatigable. It was time for the Earth to finish its annual marathon around the deity of light and warmth and it was time for the story to come to its final lap, the Winter’s perseverance.

And then one fine day, the scales were tipped off. The standard weights were taken off from their delicate, yet seemingly perfect balance of emotions and efforts. As Amadeus was getting ready to leave for America and go to his hometown in Seattle, he stumbled upon something. As he was checking his bags for all the things he had packed for his journey back home, he opened his old backpack which he had stopped using because the shoulder strap had been torn off for some mysterious reasons a few months back. He started throwing off old wrappers of chocolate from the side pocket, came upon some old receipts from restaurants he had frequented with Alexandria and started gathering loose cash and coins from various pockets of the bag. To speed up the cleaning of the backpack, he flipped the bag upside down and started emptying everything at once. Dust, lint and particles of soil rained down from this ancient bag of the archaeologist. Forgotten names, forgotten faces and forgotten struggles, the worldly civilizations in its hubris swallowed by dust and erased from memory. Always in the end, everything returns to dust. As Horace once said, ‘’Pulvis et umbra sumus.” But under the bright light from the window, fell a small piece of paper, levitating and drifting in the still air of the room until it hit the thin veneer of dust, inanimate. He wondered what this paper could have. Surely it must be piece of paper from his research or something insignificant. He carefully unfolded the paper and was astounded by the most beautiful handwriting he had come across in years. The curves and splines in the letters were mesmerizing and he felt someone had taken a very thin paintbrush and painted those letters with careful precision. There was a little mischief in his anaemic backpack of dust and trifling things. He scanned the bottom of the paper but could not find any writer’s name on it. His heart started pounding and he sat down on the chair with this unidentified piece of paper in his hands. For a reason unbeknownst to him, he handled the piece of paper very delicately worrying it might disintegrate like an old, preserved papyrus. The sea inside rocked and pitched and he couldn’t get a handle on the ropes of his sail. He had to catch his flight in a while but here he was, wondering if this was his new Odyssey.

“Amadeus, I do not know how much time I have left here. It isn’t that I will forget you once I leave this beautiful world we created. But at a certain point the memory of you will stop accompanying me and I would stay there like a city left behind by the wagon. I would be there, somewhere behind you and only if you could go back and look for it. But why should you? We opened ourselves, you yourself to me and I myself to you and we submerged deep in the sacred covenant of something we do not understand yet. But to love is to be vulnerable. I carry your heart with me, I go, you go, and I fear no fate, yet I fear I might be incomplete. Love, however strong might not be able to suffice this incompleteness and might break your beautiful heart. The last few weeks, I feel afraid that I might be drifting away and that’s the reason I seem far from you. I ran and ran and lost people on the way while finding others. Now I will travel far with my conscience, heavy and old. But Time will keep moving and swallow us in its fierce grip. But the characters we played will live on for eternity. Generations hence, lovers will climb trees together, swim rivers together and hide their fears in caves. Eons ahead, men and women will fall in love with each other and accept their limitations and our love will rise again in hushed tones. Centuries in the future, dreams will be shared, and our characters will bump across each other and the historian within them will reminisce and jump. Our characters, anxious and innocent will be communal histories and a library of books. Our love, implicit will live on.

A love, deferred.”

The light which had blinded me started to fade out and I could finally open my eyes to the Euclidean sphere around me. There were tears in my eyes as I finished reading the last letter of the letter by Alexandria. ‘My Alexandria! Oh, how much I miss you!’

Amadeus in a huge fit of anxiety with nausea rendering him helpless boarded his flight to America. He thought to himself,’ I loved her smell, she always smelled fresh, freshly washed or of fresh laundry. The Odyssey was never a story of homecoming, it was rather a story to set off again. A story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. But I have to strive until I find the thing which made me eager and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfil.’ As Amadeus put on his earphones and held the backpack tightly in his lap, the world within him started to churn up.

Sometime later in the pangs of exasperation yet with eyes closed and head supported by the window, a gentle announcement from the pilot sounded something like this, ‘We will be reaching Boston in 5 hours from now at 10:30 am Eastern Time…………..’

At 4:15pm, as the Sun was settling down on the Eastern coast and the last few minutes of daylight were fighting tremendously hard to keep the people on this Euclidean sphere happy, Alexandria received a text message on her phone from Amadeus, ‘Hey Alexandria, can you come down from your apartment? I am not kidding.’

Her eyes lit up like a million bulbs inside her were connected to a power source and then suddenly, a heaviness weighed her down. With teary eyed, she ran to the window and saw Amadeus looking around with a paper in his hand and the backpack in the other hand. She looked away from the window and locked herself up in her bedroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and said to herself,’ I am a woman of honour and smartness, always taking risks and ideal. People fall in love with her and yet I don’t know her well enough.’ She pressed herself against the wall with her hands shaking and her heart trembling with fear or joy. After a couple of minutes, she mustered courage to text him back,’ So you know who purposefully cut the shoulder strap of your backpack?’

‘I don’t know what prompted you to take such an action but I am here for the refund and rest of the story’, he promptly replied while breathing heavily.

‘So, we either find or lose ourselves now, don’t we?’, she asked.

‘Little by little, we will discover the love we lost in that magnificent library. A love, deferred.’

A glass wall, transparent and impermeable to love’s tumult separated them as Alexandria reached downstairs in the glass elevator with Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek song playing on the elevator’s speaker.

As I started walking back to my home after finishing my work at the Library of Alexandria, I held on to the letter I had found in the library. Memory had become my partner and food or dance didn’t make me happy. I nurtured my memory with her absence, held it and danced with it. But today, I found something else after reading the letter. The emotion that broke my heart could be my cure. Walking back home, I knew love was outside my door, waiting for me step on the new trail. I had forgotten something implicit and extremely important. I needed to fall in love and be disassembled again. No need to defer it now.