Try as he might, he couldn't push the past out of his mind. The hours that had been spent with her, the places they had visited, the memories they had shared - these were not idle recollections that could be wished away. Yet, it was these that haunted him now: the corner of the city which they passed by frequently, the restaurant where he watched her eat baked food with such obvious relish, the roads in the parts of the city he had never visited before she pointed them out to him, there were too many of them for him to even attempt to forget. Not that he particularly wished to forget them either, for one did not forget things that have given one tremendous joy in the past, not even when they now give one great pain.
And then there were the evenings when they had fought - he trying to explain why it was important to go ahead with the consensus of both families and she trying to tell him that her time was running out quickly and inexorably. Sometimes, he was so stubborn and she used to break down. He used to hold her in his arms, helpless, unable to console her for he was the very cause of her pain.
Yet, he chose to gamble her away lightly when she said her folks were seriously asking her to meet with a guy who could be a prospective husband. He never did understand the gravity of the situation, believing, in the confines of his idealistic, impractical mind, that things would work out favourably for them. Not until much later did he realise that she had been dead serious, and that she had gone through tremendous pain because of his refusal to go ahead with it, refusal to believe that they could rebuild bridges with the people who mattered; that those people would come around eventually no matter how troubled they might be at first. But by then, things were irretrievably beyond his reach.
It was about two weeks past the date of her marriage. He was heart-broken and unable to forgive himself for losing the most precious person in his life; unable to forgive them either who threw every possible obstacle in his way and then some. He realised too late that there were certain things in life for which one must not wait for any approval; that it was his life after all to live; that no matter how much he tried to please his people, when there was a clash of interests, they would always stick to their guns and expect him to give in; that for all their claims about selflessness, they were selfish people who wanted to impose on him their ideas of his happiness, even when such ideas tore him apart violently.
She had only been in his life for two years, yet his grief was deep, the pain of her loss permanent. He could not explain even to himself why he missed her. Maybe it was because she had been able to bring out the warmth and liveliness in him; because her enthusiasm had been infectious and it had made him enthusiastic himself; because when he was with her, he had felt he was in the presence of a being that loved him for what he was; because she had demanded nothing of him at all, not even his time, being content instead whenever they had had the time to meet each other; because her eyes had lit up every time they had met; because she had accepted him in spite of his faults, his inexcusable and torturous vacillations; because things had seemed just right when he was with her.
He had never entered her previous places of residence (except on one occasion when she needed him to) but he rode past them. He had never consciously tried to remember the routes around the city that she had taught him, but he traversed them effortlessly. Maybe it was a kind of wordless pilgrimage, a penance he forced himself to perform, a pain he pushed himself to endure.
