“Arhaan?"
"Yes, it’s me"
"How are you? Is everything okay?", Mahi was stunned and confused, her heart racing, as it did every time she heard him speak or received any communication from him. It had been 5 months since she last saw or spoke to Arhaan. Now why had he felt the need to get in touch with her? She thought she had made him understand that she could not possibly exert any more effort on him.
"I’m fine." She replied. She did not say anything else to continue the conversation. After a moment’s silence he began to ask her what she was doing now, how her family were and how the job was going. She listened to him, bewildered by his style of conversation. He was talking in such a casual and familiar manner as though they had only been speaking to each other the night before and all this time had never passed. As though he were next to her at this very moment and not miles away living in the Middle East.
"I wish I could see you", she heard him say as she continued her silence.
Mahi didn’t know how to react to that. Her heart was pounding and her stomach tightened in that annoyingly familiar manner. Her body certainly knew how to react to his impossible comments and requests but against her senses she involuntarily whispered "I wish I could see you too", and as soon as she said the words Mahi gritted her teeth in annoyance at still being so weak around him, yet at the same time she knew he was smiling at her words. So she hurriedly added "but we can’t. You are in Dubai now. What is it like over there?"
She tried to steer the conversation towards safer ground.
"I’m getting married", she said abruptly before he could answer and was met with silence."
“I want to be with you," was his response. Mahi took a sharp intake of breathe at how cruel he could be to her.
"No you don’t Arhaan. You only think you do."
"How do you know that Mahi? Why do you say that I don’t want to?"
"Tell me when and why you came to the conclusion that you want to be with me?", she asked.
"Why does that matter to you all of a sudden?” He asked. “You spent a whole year trying to convince me to believe in the idea of a committed relationship and the institution of marriage and now that I am telling you that I do believe, you are questioning me of the reasons?"
"I have only asked for reasons. Why is it so difficult for you to provide any? Is it because you don’t have any and this is simply a spur of the moment decision where you thought today I will ring Mahi and ask such and such."
"Don’t be ridiculous"
"Well then give me an answer"He didn’t say anything.
"Fine. When you say you want to be with me, what does that even mean? You want to me my friend again? Shall we hang out again?"
"Of course not! There is a difference between friendship and being with someone."
"Hah," she snorted. "I thought there wasn’t, or at least that is what you led me to believe."
"When I defined our relationship as a friendship i.e our association as a friendship, it was at a time when we were friends…", he started.
"God no", she interrupted; "I can’t listen to your nonsense again."
"Listen Arhaan," she stalled him, "never mind I’ve got to go now…"
"No.. wait listen to me," he pleaded, but she interrupted him.
"You call me suddenly after so long and you can’t even manage to produce one sensible reason as to why I should listen to you and this new decision you have made."
"It’s not a decision …I’m asking you."
"You’re not asking me anything. All you said was that you want to be with me, and you think that I have been waiting around patiently for you to have a change of heart and will instantly agree to whatever you say."
"No I did not think that. Do not think that at all, I was merely telling you that I know now for certain that I want to be with you and I hoped you might still feel the same way."
"And I’m telling you that I know you better than you know yourself. You always acknowledged that much, and the truth is something else has caused you to make this decision, and you’re not revealing it to me."
"There really is nothing else. Spending all this time here I’ve realized that I would like to settle down and spend my life with someone…that I would like to share my life, and I can’t think of that person being anyone better than you."
"I see and have your parents contacted you recently?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"Well have they?"
"Yes they have, but I don’t see what that has to do with this."
"Let me enlighten you then as you are never are aware of anything. Arhaan Khan, you have most likely been feeling lonely the past few months in Dubaai, living alone and adjusting to a new lifestyle. You have started to think the bachelor lifestyle is not as enticing as you had once believed it to be. You have spent time sleeping around with various girls but you have not felt that emotional security that you thought you no longer had any need for."
"Hold on I haven’t been sleeping around.."
"Having sex then?", She said sharply. "Is that a better way to describe your pursuits?"
"Is that what upsets you? That I’ve been with other girls?"
"Oh God", she cursed, "you are so blind and arrogant. Is that all you can think of – that I’m jealous of your sexual activity?"
"Alright then, you’re obviously not. Do carry on explaining to me why I want to be with you."
She didn’t say anything so he said, "go on, I won’t interrupt again. You had got to the point that thought I was being sexually satisfied, I was in need of emotional security. And yet perhaps I haven’t been getting sexual satisfaction either…" he added and she could hear the teasing laughter in his voice.
She ignored his sarcasm and teasing and continued. "Yes you’ve clearly understood yourself a bit better now. Anyhow I’m guessing when your family contacted you, your brothers and sisters all seemed happy and settled with their families and you missed it and wanted the same. On top of that at your age, undoubtedly your family are very keen for you to get married and settle down. Therefore you decided you would come to me."
"You forget I haven’t proposed marriage."
"Thank you. Thank you for thinking of me so randomly then. No you haven’t proposed marriage, have you?."
"I was teasing…I do want to marry. Are you going to tell me that I don’t?"
"Yes"
"How did you come to that conclusion?"
"You should marry someone you love."
"Exactly, which is why I’m speaking to you." These were words she had longed to hear once. All that she had ever wanted to hear. It made her pause and reflect, but she knew ultimately it wasn't true.
"No Arhaan you don’t want to marry me. You feel that you should marry me because you want to marry someone who you get along with, who you think will be an ideal daughter-in-law and wife, a homely girl, who won’t leave you like your first wife."
"I care about you a lot. More than I have for any other girl since since…... since Samira."
"You can’t even say her name now and it’s been 2 years", she said. "We entered each other’s lives at a time when we needed each other the most and we have helped each other in an immense and unchangeable way. But that is all we can ever be. We were just friends as you always stressed. We helped each other through difficult times, but that is all we were ever meant to be, and now we must accept that we were only supposed to have known each other for a set amount of time, at a crossroad and now our lives are to run parallel again. We can’t bend the roads of fate to make us cross again and nor can we blend these roads into one."
"But we have crossed, we are at a crossing again," he asserted.
"It's an unnatural one that you are forcefully trying to create because you think that you still need me in your life."
"Don’t you need me anymore?" he asked. She didn’t say anything.
"Don’t you need me?"
"You don’t need me," she sighed. "And you say that you care about me, but you see caring is not enough. We can’t be with everyone we care about, we can’t just marry everyone we care about…caring is not love. One day you will find that girl that you love and you will want to be with her not because you think you need to settle down, not because your family wants you to settle down but because she makes you feel alive and you cannot live without her. Not even for a moment."
"You never answered my question. You said that I’m under the mistaken impression that I need you, but what about you? Don’t you need me?"
"It doesn’t matter whether I need you. I’m getting married", she finished.
"Hah so a different rule applies to you?" He laughed.
"What does that mean?"
"You’ve just admitted that you do need me, yet you are marrying someone else. Do you love your husband? Do you need him Mahi – you who are so good at advising others, or do you reserve your advisory sessions especially for me?"
"I don’t believe in love, I’ve always told you that I think it’s a ridiculous idea, nor do I need love in marriage and no I don’t think I need my husband. I would be able to live without him. However I believe in marriage and companionship and he is a good person, he is witty and intelligent and I like him."
"If you don’t believe in love…why do you think I need to marry someone that I love for one that claims to know nothing about love you describe it well."
"Anyone can describe love. It is the most talked about and written about idea."
"Emotion," he said.
"Exactly, you call it an emotion, I believe it’s a concept. That is why you need to marry someone you love, because you believe in it and you won’t be happy unless you are married to ‘her’. Arhaan…if you think Samira is still the one for you, go and find her and bring her back into your life and if not then find that girl who is the one for you and just be happy."
"And you?"
"I’m getting married," was all she said.
"I hope you have a happily married life then Mahi." You are a hypocrite. He didn’t say it but she could hear it in his voice.
Mahi held the phone in her hand and sat on the floor for an hour, numb with the emotions flowing through her veins. She couldn’t think or cry, she was immovable. That was the last time she would ever hear from him. She thought about whether she should have accepted his offer of marriage…but decided she had made the right choice. She could never spend the rest of her life with him knowing that he did not truly love her, that she was his second choice and he was settling. As for her perhaps she was a hypocrite and she was doing the exact same thing which she had told him not to do, but at least her husband would never find out that she loved another. She would never let her husband know someone else resided in her heart.
In the day to day of living who was affected by such emotions? It was only in those quiet moments in life that the pain in the heart would resurface and trouble her and that was a fact she would have to deal with whether she was with Arhaan or someone else. At least being away from him she would not grow to hate him and mostly he would never have the power to hurt her afresh. She would try her best to keep her husband happy and that is all a person is capable of…effort.
Mahi would never know what might have happened if she had not said those fatal words, but there needed to be a point in time when her heart and mind would both learn to accept that Arhaan had never loved her. Not everyone is destined to be with the person that they fall in love with. Mahi had never believed in love and still struggled with the idea despite having felt emotions that could be compared to those which people summarised as being symptoms of love.
As far as she could describe it she knew that she would always care about Arhaan with an intensity that she had never felt for anyone beyond her family. The strangest feeling was how much she wanted him to be happy – and often she had mistaken this as being her weakness – that despite his unfair treatment of her, she wanted him to be happy above all and the knowledge that he was happy gave her satisfaction and joy. She had felt it when she was around him, she knew that every memory of being with him would affect her in years to come and she would never be able to forget him. She might forget his name, she might forget the moments they had spent together but the sensations she had felt because of him would never be erased from her mind.
"Yes, it’s me"
"How are you? Is everything okay?", Mahi was stunned and confused, her heart racing, as it did every time she heard him speak or received any communication from him. It had been 5 months since she last saw or spoke to Arhaan. Now why had he felt the need to get in touch with her? She thought she had made him understand that she could not possibly exert any more effort on him.
"I’m fine." She replied. She did not say anything else to continue the conversation. After a moment’s silence he began to ask her what she was doing now, how her family were and how the job was going. She listened to him, bewildered by his style of conversation. He was talking in such a casual and familiar manner as though they had only been speaking to each other the night before and all this time had never passed. As though he were next to her at this very moment and not miles away living in the Middle East.
"I wish I could see you", she heard him say as she continued her silence.
Mahi didn’t know how to react to that. Her heart was pounding and her stomach tightened in that annoyingly familiar manner. Her body certainly knew how to react to his impossible comments and requests but against her senses she involuntarily whispered "I wish I could see you too", and as soon as she said the words Mahi gritted her teeth in annoyance at still being so weak around him, yet at the same time she knew he was smiling at her words. So she hurriedly added "but we can’t. You are in Dubai now. What is it like over there?"
She tried to steer the conversation towards safer ground.
"I’m getting married", she said abruptly before he could answer and was met with silence."
“I want to be with you," was his response. Mahi took a sharp intake of breathe at how cruel he could be to her.
"No you don’t Arhaan. You only think you do."
"How do you know that Mahi? Why do you say that I don’t want to?"
"Tell me when and why you came to the conclusion that you want to be with me?", she asked.
"Why does that matter to you all of a sudden?” He asked. “You spent a whole year trying to convince me to believe in the idea of a committed relationship and the institution of marriage and now that I am telling you that I do believe, you are questioning me of the reasons?"
"I have only asked for reasons. Why is it so difficult for you to provide any? Is it because you don’t have any and this is simply a spur of the moment decision where you thought today I will ring Mahi and ask such and such."
"Don’t be ridiculous"
"Well then give me an answer"He didn’t say anything.
"Fine. When you say you want to be with me, what does that even mean? You want to me my friend again? Shall we hang out again?"
"Of course not! There is a difference between friendship and being with someone."
"Hah," she snorted. "I thought there wasn’t, or at least that is what you led me to believe."
"When I defined our relationship as a friendship i.e our association as a friendship, it was at a time when we were friends…", he started.
"God no", she interrupted; "I can’t listen to your nonsense again."
"Listen Arhaan," she stalled him, "never mind I’ve got to go now…"
"No.. wait listen to me," he pleaded, but she interrupted him.
"You call me suddenly after so long and you can’t even manage to produce one sensible reason as to why I should listen to you and this new decision you have made."
"It’s not a decision …I’m asking you."
"You’re not asking me anything. All you said was that you want to be with me, and you think that I have been waiting around patiently for you to have a change of heart and will instantly agree to whatever you say."
"No I did not think that. Do not think that at all, I was merely telling you that I know now for certain that I want to be with you and I hoped you might still feel the same way."
"And I’m telling you that I know you better than you know yourself. You always acknowledged that much, and the truth is something else has caused you to make this decision, and you’re not revealing it to me."
"There really is nothing else. Spending all this time here I’ve realized that I would like to settle down and spend my life with someone…that I would like to share my life, and I can’t think of that person being anyone better than you."
"I see and have your parents contacted you recently?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"Well have they?"
"Yes they have, but I don’t see what that has to do with this."
"Let me enlighten you then as you are never are aware of anything. Arhaan Khan, you have most likely been feeling lonely the past few months in Dubaai, living alone and adjusting to a new lifestyle. You have started to think the bachelor lifestyle is not as enticing as you had once believed it to be. You have spent time sleeping around with various girls but you have not felt that emotional security that you thought you no longer had any need for."
"Hold on I haven’t been sleeping around.."
"Having sex then?", She said sharply. "Is that a better way to describe your pursuits?"
"Is that what upsets you? That I’ve been with other girls?"
"Oh God", she cursed, "you are so blind and arrogant. Is that all you can think of – that I’m jealous of your sexual activity?"
"Alright then, you’re obviously not. Do carry on explaining to me why I want to be with you."
She didn’t say anything so he said, "go on, I won’t interrupt again. You had got to the point that thought I was being sexually satisfied, I was in need of emotional security. And yet perhaps I haven’t been getting sexual satisfaction either…" he added and she could hear the teasing laughter in his voice.
She ignored his sarcasm and teasing and continued. "Yes you’ve clearly understood yourself a bit better now. Anyhow I’m guessing when your family contacted you, your brothers and sisters all seemed happy and settled with their families and you missed it and wanted the same. On top of that at your age, undoubtedly your family are very keen for you to get married and settle down. Therefore you decided you would come to me."
"You forget I haven’t proposed marriage."
"Thank you. Thank you for thinking of me so randomly then. No you haven’t proposed marriage, have you?."
"I was teasing…I do want to marry. Are you going to tell me that I don’t?"
"Yes"
"How did you come to that conclusion?"
"You should marry someone you love."
"Exactly, which is why I’m speaking to you." These were words she had longed to hear once. All that she had ever wanted to hear. It made her pause and reflect, but she knew ultimately it wasn't true.
"No Arhaan you don’t want to marry me. You feel that you should marry me because you want to marry someone who you get along with, who you think will be an ideal daughter-in-law and wife, a homely girl, who won’t leave you like your first wife."
"I care about you a lot. More than I have for any other girl since since…... since Samira."
"You can’t even say her name now and it’s been 2 years", she said. "We entered each other’s lives at a time when we needed each other the most and we have helped each other in an immense and unchangeable way. But that is all we can ever be. We were just friends as you always stressed. We helped each other through difficult times, but that is all we were ever meant to be, and now we must accept that we were only supposed to have known each other for a set amount of time, at a crossroad and now our lives are to run parallel again. We can’t bend the roads of fate to make us cross again and nor can we blend these roads into one."
"But we have crossed, we are at a crossing again," he asserted.
"It's an unnatural one that you are forcefully trying to create because you think that you still need me in your life."
"Don’t you need me anymore?" he asked. She didn’t say anything.
"Don’t you need me?"
"You don’t need me," she sighed. "And you say that you care about me, but you see caring is not enough. We can’t be with everyone we care about, we can’t just marry everyone we care about…caring is not love. One day you will find that girl that you love and you will want to be with her not because you think you need to settle down, not because your family wants you to settle down but because she makes you feel alive and you cannot live without her. Not even for a moment."
"You never answered my question. You said that I’m under the mistaken impression that I need you, but what about you? Don’t you need me?"
"It doesn’t matter whether I need you. I’m getting married", she finished.
"Hah so a different rule applies to you?" He laughed.
"What does that mean?"
"You’ve just admitted that you do need me, yet you are marrying someone else. Do you love your husband? Do you need him Mahi – you who are so good at advising others, or do you reserve your advisory sessions especially for me?"
"I don’t believe in love, I’ve always told you that I think it’s a ridiculous idea, nor do I need love in marriage and no I don’t think I need my husband. I would be able to live without him. However I believe in marriage and companionship and he is a good person, he is witty and intelligent and I like him."
"If you don’t believe in love…why do you think I need to marry someone that I love for one that claims to know nothing about love you describe it well."
"Anyone can describe love. It is the most talked about and written about idea."
"Emotion," he said.
"Exactly, you call it an emotion, I believe it’s a concept. That is why you need to marry someone you love, because you believe in it and you won’t be happy unless you are married to ‘her’. Arhaan…if you think Samira is still the one for you, go and find her and bring her back into your life and if not then find that girl who is the one for you and just be happy."
"And you?"
"I’m getting married," was all she said.
"I hope you have a happily married life then Mahi." You are a hypocrite. He didn’t say it but she could hear it in his voice.
Mahi held the phone in her hand and sat on the floor for an hour, numb with the emotions flowing through her veins. She couldn’t think or cry, she was immovable. That was the last time she would ever hear from him. She thought about whether she should have accepted his offer of marriage…but decided she had made the right choice. She could never spend the rest of her life with him knowing that he did not truly love her, that she was his second choice and he was settling. As for her perhaps she was a hypocrite and she was doing the exact same thing which she had told him not to do, but at least her husband would never find out that she loved another. She would never let her husband know someone else resided in her heart.
In the day to day of living who was affected by such emotions? It was only in those quiet moments in life that the pain in the heart would resurface and trouble her and that was a fact she would have to deal with whether she was with Arhaan or someone else. At least being away from him she would not grow to hate him and mostly he would never have the power to hurt her afresh. She would try her best to keep her husband happy and that is all a person is capable of…effort.
Mahi would never know what might have happened if she had not said those fatal words, but there needed to be a point in time when her heart and mind would both learn to accept that Arhaan had never loved her. Not everyone is destined to be with the person that they fall in love with. Mahi had never believed in love and still struggled with the idea despite having felt emotions that could be compared to those which people summarised as being symptoms of love.
As far as she could describe it she knew that she would always care about Arhaan with an intensity that she had never felt for anyone beyond her family. The strangest feeling was how much she wanted him to be happy – and often she had mistaken this as being her weakness – that despite his unfair treatment of her, she wanted him to be happy above all and the knowledge that he was happy gave her satisfaction and joy. She had felt it when she was around him, she knew that every memory of being with him would affect her in years to come and she would never be able to forget him. She might forget his name, she might forget the moments they had spent together but the sensations she had felt because of him would never be erased from her mind.
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