I blew her birthday candles thrice before she could. Not out of selfishness, but out of pure instinct. Not once, not twice, but thrice. We were all doubling over, trying not to make a loud screech of laughter close to her door.
It was a surprise. She had almost caught us as our friend and I were walking down the stairs. Sweetening our conversation with white lies and extra smiles, we made it out.
It had paid off. Her eyes widened, her fingers fisting the bedsheets as she sat up, her open mouth shutting. I had blown the candles without wishing much, yet this one had come true.
It was a joyful parade from her room to the mess, with her face lightly coated in frosting and a toothed smile.
It remained today when we fawned over Keats' love letter to Fanny Brawne. His desperation and exasperation were evident in his poetic lines of yearning and pain. This man was a writer, alright—not that he needs my approval. Well, I suppose he did, with the trajectory of his and many young poets' lives at that time.
However, the ethics of how this love letter became known to the public are a little murky. The betrayal of a friend stings even in death.
Without going into detail about that, I will share how Keats beautifully expressed this love of his. One could call it obsession, as from what I learned in class, she wasn't responding to these letters of his.
He expressed that he didn't understand how people could accept martyrdom for their religion, how he shuddered at it until he didn't. Because with love as his religion, he believed he could die for it, he could die for her. She remains the only tenet of his creed: Love.
He goes on about her being a power he couldn't resist yet resisted. That is, until he met her, he says now he can't no more as the pain would be too much, and he has accepted his love as selfish, for he has come to the realization he can't breathe without her.
This is me paraphrasing, you must read this, though. It's simply beautiful and poetic—the way he entangled his beliefs with his love for her, how he came to a realization brought from his love for her.
We did fawn over this in one class, while in the other, we mostly yawned. Afterward, we went to our reading club meeting, which as usual was engaging and lovely. People coming together because of their passion for literature is always a delight to see.
There's something special about the third years watching their juniors share the books that changed their perception of reading. Because they respond with another perspective.
This obviously doesn't just extend to the senior-junior dynamic. But my point is that it's a place they were in. Now they are older, they have a new perspective.
As people, we have different perceptions. As we grow, we become different people with different perceptions than we had when we were younger.
The discussion went from sharing these things to the perception of the words "destroyed" and "defeated." It was taken from a quote which our professor had mentioned a couple of times.
A quote by Ernest Hemingway: "A man can be destroyed but never defeated." Relevant as *The Old Man and the Sea* is what was meant to be read by everyone this week for our reading club.
I hadn't read it. Neither had many. Regardless, we had a fruitful discussion, where we shared and gushed over books and the impact they had on us.
The joy of your heart being filled as you see someone share such a thing or the release you get as you too do the same is delightful. The energy remained even as the sun was determined to drain me of it.
You would never think the sun was the energy giver with the way it was determined to dent a hole in my plans. We had to go to a café, drink this watermelon drink I had been talking about with my friends.
And so we did. Swaying from one side to the other, exhausted from classes and reading club, we persevered. A girl stopped us, asking for directions to a hostel. We helped her. It was on the way to the café.
The girl and her father thanked us, waved goodbye, and smiled.
We thought of the amount of money we had to pay for a short drive of the same distance and laughed. The naivety of first year. And now second year.
The way we got to Phoenix Mall definitely didn't cost about 700 anymore.
We collapsed at the café, ordered promptly and out of breath. The watermelon drink's magic ingredient, I found this time, was the exhaustion and hunger. It added a little sweetness to it, a coolness to the ache of hot hunger.
Munching on the too-soft burger, it fell apart in my hands. I laughed. We laughed. It was a birthday treat, my friend said as we paid.
Free food tasted good today. We walked back, taking whiffs of the heavenly smell of hot sweet bread being baked in the bakery. Humans don't have a second stomach according to science, but I was about to challenge the notion.
Thankfully, we rerouted to a park where little children ran five rounds as we tried to cheer them with a mix of Malayalam and Tamil. I doubt they heard as they stared ahead in practice for their Karate lesson.
We left after both my friends swung on the swings at the park, imitating a conversation between elegant ladies with heavy, rich laughter. I snapped a few photos with some poor laughter (in comparison).
The walk back included witnessing the escape of a rather distinguished rooster from two dogs and a cow excreting calmly. While this wasn't the best experience, it helped as a mood lightener when we realized we had a future to worry about.
Back at the hall, we went our separate ways.
The ache of my muscles, the freeing of tied-up hair, and the crack of my back sounded as I stretched back to release the tension of tomorrow's and sorrows of Sundays.
What was to come wasn't saddening, it was just not going to be today. We all knew it. But it was harder when the reason for my aching muscles wasn't going to be from forgetting how much we walked as we talked.
Or maybe it would. Maybe I should go out more. With love as your religion and creed, maybe the world would be a little lighter.
It's hard to be a believer of it when you see so little of it. But perhaps we need to look into ourselves, to believe in love because we are so full of it.
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