I knew she loved me. Love, it’s a word a lil too strong. But I know, that’s the word. She loved me. Then why on earth didn’t I ever reciprocate? My heart was callous. Heartless would be the word? She kept hinting me till she ran out of the hint words. Finally she had to openly declare her love for me. This time, the word love was even stronger. It carried a lot of weight, intensity, depth, emotions, feelings, frustration, anticipation, hope, and numerous other expressions which I still didn’t care for. Why? Because my heart was callous. Remember that word?
She cried. I won’t call it emotional blackmail, because she knew I’d never ever fall for that. Perhaps I’d alienate myself further. But she cried. It was her way of detoxification. Once she cried for someone, then that someone would be out of her life, forever. And now, I was the ‘that someone’. She cried and I still didn’t care. Because my heart was callous. I gave a cold shoulder to lean on. As expected, she gave me one as well. Yes, I needed one as well. And she knew it. I never showed any feeling of despair. But she knew that I’ll miss her. That I can’t live without her. This wasn’t her hope, but gut feeling. And I did miss her. But I never knew I’d miss her. How could I? My heart is callous, remember?
I squashed all her hopes when we were together. Never gave her a chance to remotely think of me as her guy. But she did. Every moment. Talking about hope, she dreamt a lot. And shared it all. And I laughed all this while. Never knew the dreams I was part of, would be mine one day, when she’d be gone. And I became a hopeless dreamer from a hopeless romantic! But I never tried to go back to her, win her back. Because my heart was callous. Now the word callous has a new dimension to it. It is no longer callous, but obnoxiously callous. Callous means deaden feelings or morals. And when it comes to my heart, obnoxiously callous means a heart that throbs, yet is dead. When it’s dead, I want it to throb. But it doesn’t. But when I want the verve, it doesn’t respond.
Fate is a funny thing. When you try to make your own destiny, serendipity does help, apart from your determination and nerve. But when things start moving away from your clutch, everything start crumbling. Murphy’s law, right? Nope. Fate. And I was the spectator now, seeing everything going away from me. And I could not do anything about it. After all, you can change destiny to a level where sanity is ensconced in your head. After that, it’s chaos gone haywire, where there is no longer any order in the disorder. Just destruction. Devastation. All because of a heart that was callous. Yes, callous is the word. The obnoxious word. The kind of word no one would want to describe heart. But I did. Because, it made my fate callous too!
