The Shadow Greater Than Light / Three

- Oh my God! Should I come to you? A mad dog has bitten me! If I die, I'll die quickly, all at once, but if I come to you, I'll have to die a little every day! Of course, whether living in joy or in sorrow, one must die... so what's wrong with living and dying in a bit of suffering for your sake?—with this philosophy, I could very well come to you! Ha ha ha! By the way, I love that song too, it's very beautiful.
- Say whatever your heart desires. What I've said, I've said from the heart. Listen to the song again! Once more for me, please!
- Alright, fine.
- Imagine, if I must leave everything behind and go away someday...
- This one I love too! Chitra Singh is pure, living love incarnate! If one could find someone like that in life, one could bid farewell to an entire lifetime with a smile!
- When I disappear from Facebook, these lines... will be for you!
- I see.
- Just "I see"? Are such short replies all that's allotted for me?
- What else can be said? Disappearing is good! There's a kind of romance even in leaving someone behind! Release one hand, grasp another... isn't it sweet, this whole business? Good night.
- I'll prepare a gift for you and send it one day without telling you. Along with a story. A story written with great care. About what? You'll find that out later.
I often go to fixed-price shops. Due to cruel irony of fate, though I have little money, I cannot forget my own existence. Besides, I always get cheated in bargaining. So that day I went to such a shop to buy a sweater. They knew I was a poor person. I am needy today because of fate! Anyway, as soon as I arrived, they said, aren't you so-and-so's daughter? We feel so sorry for you all. What a powerful family yours was, and yet today everything is finished...
I pick up a sweater, the price is high. I like it very much, so I pay the money and take it home. After coming home, I see my pocket is empty! I didn't know how I'd manage the whole month. Not a single rupee in my pocket, just the sweater in my hand—a piece of joy! When I put on the sweater, I saw it was very tight! I try going to the shop to get a bigger size. I see there are no other sizes available. The other sizes are available for different sweaters, but except for that sweater, I don't like any of them. They understand my emotion and forcibly return my money. I don't have the low mentality to take money back! But the people understand me! So they return the money! That day I felt respect for them! Good people still exist in this world! Like you! Tell me, does it bother you even to think that after all this, I still think well of you, see you in a good light?
- Good morning!
- Good morning... if you don't say this "good morning," my morning doesn't become good. Have you eaten this morning?
- Yes. You?
- No! Those who can always eat regularly or do eat regularly, I'm not in that group. Take care of yourself. Bye. (I'm not Facebook, though.) Never treat me as Facebook. Your absence hurts me much.
- Go eat.
- It will hurt me terribly to stay away from your writing! Have you eaten?
- I will. Have you?
- No. Well then, please eat.
- You?
- I'll eat later. I have a headache! Take care of yourself. Bye.
- OK.
- Have you eaten? If not, please eat first.
- You eat too. You have to stay fit!
- I'd gone to teach. If you stay well, I stay well too.
- Why haven't you eaten?
- I told you the reason. You didn't notice! You've forgotten me. You don't read my words carefully. My existence never crosses your mind! I'm nobody in your life. Accept the truth. Stay well.
- Again! Good morning!
- My heart isn't well! One of my uncles has died.
- Om divyan lokan sah gacchatu.
- Block me. I can't think a single moment without you. It hurts me much. You the only one who can make me feel happy, who can make my day beautiful. I am getting emotionally involved with you. It is one-sided, I know it better. So, I need to be left until it becomes too late. At the end of the day it will only hurt me...only me. No one else will suffer.
- Relax...
- BLOCK me. I don't want to go through the same traumatic situation again! It won't make you feel anything...but it will make me suffer. I've thought a lot. This is what I've concluded. Love gives nothing but suffering. I want to overcome this attachment while it's still small.
- Why are you so restless?
- I'm serious! I don't want to make anyone my world anymore. But I realize you're becoming my world bit by bit. This isn't right. Please block me. I'm not like everyone else on Facebook, you know that! Please, block me.
Looking at my face, do you think I lie like everyone else? It hurts me when you don't talk to me! What you wrote angrily that day, reading that, I suffered all night. Though these sufferings may be just Facebook to you, they're not to me. You block me. I won't be able to block you. Please! You don't know how sensitive I am! I will suffer tremendously! And it will be completely one-sided. Save me! I want to forget you! Block me. I'll cry for two days and then be fine again! I'm a girl, after all, I'll cry like mad for two days, I'll fall sick from crying, my world will become numb and dark, I'll even reach close to death, then everything will be fine again! Girls don't die easily! But the longer you remain on my friend list, the more my expectations of you will grow! What's the point! What's the meaning of such self-imposed suffering! I see how well everyone else lives! Only I don't. Those who can't take love as merely a part-time pursuit have to suffer a lot!
That day I suddenly woke up from an afternoon nap... I thought, I didn't even ask if that person had eaten! I quickly send a message. Nothing else was in my head, my head wasn't working at all. You tell me, is this just Facebook? I understand this is some unknown pull beyond Facebook! A pull that has no meaning, no recognition, no peace! Instead there's some neglect and ice-cold response! I want to emerge from such invisible attachment! Block me from the page too, ban me... so I can never find anything of yours again! Blocking me won't cost you anything, but it will save me!
- Have you eaten something this evening? Or are you just writing whatever comes to mind?
- Nobody cares about news of a lesser human like me. Nobody ever suffers for my sake. Even a dog receives better treatment than me! People kick dogs, but in that case at least it gets some attention, even if negative attention, it gets something! A Niraja doesn't even get that, she gets only indifference! My beloved person remains indifferent about me—enduring this is much harder than enduring that person's extreme anger!
I collapsed senseless on the street today. I thought today would be my last day! If I'd gone out alone today, perhaps I wouldn't have returned. Two gods were with me, they brought me back holding me. After regaining consciousness, I heard I had apparently lain down in the middle of the road. Whatever happened, what's the use of telling you all this! To you... what does it matter whether I live or die? I want to forget you! I don't want to suffer any kind of pain for you, no no no! Yet I do! I must rise above this suffering! I didn't come to this world just to live suffering constantly. I'll say what you said—I walk, I stumble, then I steady myself again!
I won't let this one-sided love of mine proceed any further. Here I'm going mad, and there this madness of mine isn't touching you at all! You think the girl has gone mad, she needs to see a doctor immediately! Enough. Enough is enough! No more!
- Good night!
- Very nice! Replying without reading the message! It hurts me too! You won't understand that!
- I read it. I read all of it! I truly don't know what to say in response to this restlessness of yours!
- I'm thinking of leaving! I don't want to talk with you anymore! Forgive me if my behavior in these two months has caused you pain.
- What else are you thinking?
- None of my words touch you at all. Even if there were a cat at home, people would look at it sometimes, throw it a fish bone... I'm worse than that even! I understand everything. I'll leave tomorrow! I don't want to suffer for anyone anymore. Whatever has happened, let that be enough!
When will you come?
...forgot the last line. I didn't give that to you.
I am merely Facebook! I want to remain just Facebook! But my emotion isn't Facebook. And I respect my emotion. My emotion is worth more than the whole world... at least to me! So I'll leave! However much we've talked, that much will remain as memory! A girl slips quietly into her coffin every night, crying thinking of you... you never once inquired about her! This is a great sin indeed!... remember that!
When you quarrel with me, you write pages and pages. But otherwise you don't even read messages.
My love isn't like the cheap love of Facebook girls. This is true! This is pure, this is genuine. How I unknowingly came to love someone so much who remains beyond touch—I don't know. Do you know that thinking of you, due to tremendous mental pressure, I fell down dizzy today? What does that matter to you! I always fall in love in the wrong places! And suffer alone. For me, the person on the other side has nothing—no feeling, no emotion! I was born to give away all my feelings to the wrong person. This time too I did the same thing! How many times can a person make the same mistake in life!
Why did I come to love you so? I didn't fall in love with any achievement of yours.

Then by now I would have said at least once, I need a job... how will I continue my studies? But never once did I even feel like asking you this question!
I only know that once you leave, there will be no one left to say 'good morning' to me. The mere longing for a simple good morning has trapped me! You have become my world in just these few days! Answer me, how will I exist now without my world?
If this were merely Facebook, why would I cry for you? Why did you come to mind when I regained consciousness today? Is all this just Facebook?
You couldn't recognize me. I'm the fool who keeps love carefully preserved in her heart even after so many years! People nurture hatred in their hearts, and I foolishly kept love! No one remembers such fools.
Why did you come? Why?? It will be so very, very hard for me to forget you! And you won't even remember me! People don't remember who loved them, yet they always remember who hurt them. Oh, human psychology!
- Good morning!
- Look at the picture carefully. See how ill I was. I still am. Nothing else, just from mental stress!
Even after regaining consciousness, you were the one who came to my mind! This isn't such a simple matter! I've understood. I have to completely withdraw from you! From the ID, following pages, YouTube—everything! I can never visit your website again! Someone very close to me has told me to do exactly this! I have to leave right now! You can't leave after thinking so much; when you want to leave, you have to go without thinking. But I need a little time! I need a little time to cruelly forget someone! How true Arundhati Roy's words are: "Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much."
Why must we love according to rules and regulations? Don't the heart's desires have any value! You can't fall in love with so-and-so, or you can only fall in love with one person, or you must love your life partner, or you can't love more than one person, or if you fall in love with someone else after marriage it's wrong... these imposed shackles are nothing but torture on the heart! When a married person loves someone else, society thinks there must be distance with the person at home! Why? If there's no distance with the person at home, is it forbidden to reduce distance with someone else? Again look, this is such a society where even if there is distance with the person at home, mingling with outsiders is still a sin! In a country where the hero falls in love just by looking into the heroine's eyes in movies, what more can we expect from such a society? After all this, can people truly be bound? When someone is forcibly tied down, it creates a kind of pain in their heart. Isn't it a sin to force someone to live in pain day after day?
Let me get better first! Then I'll leave on my own! And I'll send my gift someday! Such is my fate that love is not only forbidden for me, but also a grave crime!
Block me! I have been going through excruciating pain. I am constantly tormented reckoning the fact that one-sided expectation will mentally destroy me. I have loved something which results in pain. I have never imagined that this day would come when I would be forced to forget someone brutally. I couldn't help loving you. I feel one kind of celestial nexus between us. It hurts to let go someone who can make you happy. Block me in such a way that your existence can be vanished from my part. Do it for me! I want to forget you.
- Good afternoon! Have you eaten lunch? My office address has changed. Do you know why?
- I request you to read every word I've written! No one may value another's emotions—that's their personal choice! But they should read every line written and respond. Because one shouldn't belittle another's emotions! When someone writes something to someone they love, every layer of that writing holds so much emotion. Perhaps these emotions have no value to you, but I'm living on just these emotions! You are requested to read those feelings. Then block me.
- I do read! I really do read.
- Block me. I can't stop loving you. It hurts me.
- Why are you so restless?
- Does Facebook seem like my love to you? What did you get? Answer me.
- I really do read what you write.
- You haven't read a single line.
I told you your own words! "Those who die from love remain alive as flowers! You will realize this one day."
- Which of my writings is that?
- Draft of Light's Life... What others cannot hear, I hear! Even when someone walks barefoot and silently, that sound doesn't escape my ears!... Someone with such insight, let them tell me, am I a person who shows off on Facebook? Someone who understands this much should have understood me too... should have blocked me to give me a chance to survive!
I can no longer bear this foolish pain at this stage of life.
- I asked if you'd eaten lunch. You have ignored my feelings! Remember that!
- I also asked, am I Facebook to you? How do you see me? I must know this! Block me. I want to be on your blocklist!
Could you imagine, after getting sense I searched for you! It makes me die inside! It won't make you think anything! I know it. You treat me just as Facebook, nothing else!
- You're misunderstanding!
- Block me. I've made someone my world again, without even knowing it! I have to rise from here! I must!
- Please please please calm down!
- Everything about me is arrogance, misunderstanding, audacity to you. Accepting all that, I'm saying, my love towards you is not in question. Never belittle my feelings towards you. Yesterday I became senseless in the middle of the road, and even after regaining consciousness I thought of you. Tell me, why do people ask you for BCS tips? Why are they so foolish? They come to the ocean asking for a sip of water, and leave happily with just that! You are an inborn writer. I have fallen in love with this writer! Without these writings, it won't be impossible for me to live—no, everyone lives somehow or another—but in my case, that living would have no life in it.
You're the one who says your blocklist is bigger than your friend list! Then keep me there! If I'm in that place, I'll have the consolation that I've been able to remain near you, even as a tiny particle in some vast space!
Haven't you read Existentialism? Death is not the ultimate end of life, rather it indicates a new beginning of life. That's what blocking means to me! I'll think I'm in such a place with you that goes unnoticed. I exist, but you can't tell! This is how I think from my perspective. You probably don't think like that. To you this is mere childishness. Whether you block me or not is the same thing to you. But it matters to me. Let me be the way I think! Sometimes one has to break one's own rules, go beyond one's own concepts to keep someone happy. I know you're not obligated to keep me happy. Still, as a human being, I'm making this request to you.
Block me! Why did you come? I was fine. I would walk in my own dark world, get tired from walking and walk again! But now I can't even walk! I walk a little distance, then think of you again! I can't stay without thinking of you. I think I'm really going mad! This wasn't supposed to happen! You won't share even a bit of this pain! Then why am I suffering all alone? I will leave! I'll go so far away that I can forget even your shadow! Maybe I won't be able to forget, but I'll have to try! To forget you, I'll have to suffer infinitely from you... but tell me, is forgetting even possible after such suffering? Can a person ever forget someone they've once loved, even in a lifetime?
- It's not possible for me to keep you at a distance. Understand the rest yourself.
- There's a song in Anupam Roy's lyrics... Am I bothering you too much? I'm asking you the same question. Please answer. Answer from your heart, don't say something just to make me happy.
- No. Whether someone bothers another or not depends on their mutual relationship. Like this—you send texts. If I don't want this, then whatever you send, I'll be annoyed. Again, whether your texts are acceptable to me or not depends on whether I like you or your texts. Our likes and dislikes have no absolute parameters, you know? The same words from one person's mouth sound good, but from another's they don't. Sometimes it happens that we like someone's writing or words not for the person, but for the quality of the words themselves. Even someone I don't like—I might like many of their writings or words, purely for the goodness of that writing or those words! Anyway, the point is, I like you, and I like your words too. So not a single text you send bothers me in the slightest.
- Please, let everyone in the world misunderstand me, but at least you shouldn't! Before my long messages become annoying to you, I'll leave! Just let me know briefly.
If you don't smile, who will smile in my garden?... For you I smiled after so many days! What kind of spell is this? Tell me a little! I always fall in love in the wrong places! Still I can say with hundred percent honesty, this love is pure, innocent. Don't love me back, but never question my love, not even by mistake! My God knows how, in how many ways, how many times I've loved you! That's why I'll leave! I'll take all this burden of pain on my own shoulders and go!
You know, no one ever loves me!
Parents, beloved ones...I was not born to receive anyone's love! What kind of birth is mine, isn't it? Only one line is true for me: birth itself is my lifelong sin! No one has ever loved me enough to write and send even two lines! No one's letters have ever carried sighs meant for me! And yet I live on! What a futile existence! What good is such a lifespan? I thought perhaps tomorrow this unnecessary life would grow weary and abandon me of its own accord! It didn't happen. Well, it didn't, so I lived and returned, and the first thing I saw was your face. Do you understand what place you hold in my life? When consciousness returned, I saw that poor life...still hadn't ended! My breath remained trapped! Why should your memory be the first thing that comes when I open my eyes? What explanation do you have for this? Does this feeling have no meaning? I felt...let the earth consume my entire body...but not these eyes...even if I die, my longing to see her will never be satisfied, never...How true those song lyrics are! At different moments in life, different songs become irresistible and inevitable for us!
You tell me, standing at death's threshold, seeing your face with dimming eyes in the faint light of vision—is it ever possible to forget such a person? What do you say, my beloved writer?
In this crowd of so many people, you don't even notice me! Your eyes deceive you! Do you know this? They don't even let you know that someone stands foolishly by a virtual mailbox, knowing they'll never reach you! Returns empty-handed after a long wait! Comes back again every day on the same path! Some foolish people spend their entire lives standing at the wrong turn, carrying the burden of sorrow alone, finding satisfaction in waiting at the wrong place!
- You write so beautifully, reading you brings me such comfort. I feel your touch, it stirs something in me.
- I'm listening to 'Praktan's 'The one you love...' and thinking of you. Whatever I hear, whatever I see, whatever I do...somehow I bring you into it all! Does this make any sense?
- It's a very beloved song.
- This song is for you, as a blessing!...You compose songs in someone else's rhythm!
- I can't. You compose. Don't leave me!
- I need some time! I'll go away! What's the point of prolonging the burden of pain I must carry alone on my shoulders! No one ever suffers for my sake. Everyone lives quite well! No one even asks after me! Though what earthly benefit would there be in asking after me! I'm not someone worth inquiring about. Such a person lives—someone with no one to ask after them, someone who causes no one any concern, someone who would sink into the abyss of oblivion the day after they died. Such people must also live, seeing death up close at every moment yet playing hide-and-seek with life. Do you understand how I am?
Without you, my morning will never be auspicious! If you don't believe it, ask me many years from now...how I am...In this life, it's because of you that I first saw a true morning! Light breaks through the languid body of dawn, pierces the sky and arrives, that light gradually spreads to near and distant trees, leaves, walls, my room...I would never have known how beautiful mornings could look without receiving your 'good morning.' The morning light, morning breeze, morning sunshine, morning murmur...I had never understood these before.
You know, yesterday when I lay down in the middle of the road, what a crowd gathered around me! Everyone was looking at me, yet I didn't see any of them. Even among so many people, I was searching for you! Since this morning, despite my sick body, I've been staring for hours at the green light glowing beside your name! Whether you're active on Messenger or not means everything to me. That's when all kinds of thoughts start accumulating in my head.
God never makes mistakes! Ask Him whether I'm fabricating even a single word! If even one word of mine is false by an atom's measure, I'm ready to accept the world's cruelest punishment for it.
What's the use of saying all this! Will I ever be anyone's regret! I won't! Who would throw the hot breath of longing for me against their own lips? And why would they?
The Creator has granted me this lifespan so I can live by giving someone my heart's complete, genuine love and receiving hatred in return! I must walk carrying the burden of such a life...I too suffer, I too am human!
I have accepted it! You know, pain accumulates in the corners of human eyes. Even if you send me a single letter written small, my eyes look at those letters in such a way that the letters themselves understand my anguish! But see how much your eyes deceive you—you don't even realize it! You never feel like seeing me, never want to know if the green light beside my name is glowing!
You're the one who says that if someone walks barefoot and silently past you, that sound doesn't escape your ears! And doesn't the sound of my pitiful weeping reach your ears to cause you even a little pain? Doesn't it annoy you even a bit? Or do you simply never take these things seriously? Have you become so stone-hearted when it comes to me! I really want to know!
You're not answering. Of course, it's better not to get some answers! Still, the curiosity will remain lifelong! In this one life, let me live with just this foolish curiosity. I thought, I haven't gone to the temple in anger for many days! Tomorrow I'll go once to offer prayers for you! Do you know how many days I've fasted wishing for your wellbeing?...Oh, not eating for a day or two is good for the body, the body loses weight—is that what came to mind? I know!
In the next birth, we'll eat puchka together, making our lips and tongues red! Will you remember?
Will you be born for me? Will you be born as my writer...not as some celebrity! You'll write for me, you'll write making me win. Your writing will contain the history of my suffering, your pen will bleed with the pain of my not getting you. May I be able to touch your writing, feel it from inside my chest. You'll come again as my angel. You'll come only for me. You'll return bringing a whole life for me. We two will come to this world with the same moment of death as our destiny. We'll grow old together, be happy together, chase away sorrows together. There will be many fights, quarrels and battles, but we'll never leave each other. We'll forget how to walk alone, letting go of each other's hands! You can come with a different face if you like, but may your heart remain just the same. We won't need much—a roof overhead and two meals a day will suit us perfectly. In that birth, I'll recognize you properly, I'll find you!
'In the next birth when we're exactly sixteen, we'll fall in love then...will you remember?'
We'll walk on the road together, sing off-key! 'I had so many words, they couldn't be spoken in this birth. There were so many words in my chest—arranged and organized, yet they couldn't be spoken as poetry! This birth passed completely in impossible discordance! In the next birth I'll become human! If I get your love, I will, I will become human!'
- So ma'am, where are you now? What are you doing?
- I'm scrutinizing your letters carefully! I love these...these letters so much! It will be very hard for me to leave them!...My heart is not well, I keep feeling you're not beside me, I think, damn it, why won't time pass?...I'm listening to songs. This entire song is for you! Each song is like a fragment of life!
- I love you this much! Such a beautiful song!