Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

Its just a test..so don’t jump off the balcony just yet

Ah! She had done it; she had done it at last. Shouldn’t I have been jumping with joy over this? True, I was really happy but somewhere deep down something did not seem right. It is like you have been waiting for something for so long, then it happens and yet there is a feeling of dissatisfaction. What was the cause of this restlessness? I looked at the email again.

‘I did it Abhay’ - it euphorically said.

I did not believe it. Rather I did not want to believe it. Somewhere deep inside my being, I wanted things to be different - for the sender of the email to be in love with me. Yeah, yeah I know I will get advice from all and sundry saying that I should have made my feelings known to her. Easier said than done. How do you tell this remarkable woman standing in front of you that you have been in love with her for as long back as you remember, though you did not realize it yourself? How can you tell your best friend that it is more than friendship that you crave from her? How can you say anything after you make up your mind to say an ‘I love you’ at any cost and then end up having to listen to her gushing about this man she had fallen in love with? How can you tell her about your deepest feelings when one look at this boy friend of hers and you know you can never measure up to him in any respect? How can you tell her that there was nothing wrong with your eyes and that those were real tears that she saw? How can you tell a girl that you love her with every part of your whole being when she is relating to you the latest fight that she had with her boyfriend? Tell me, how can you. At least I could not.

Another argument could be that I should have told her before the boyfriend person even entered the picture. Hello! How was I going to declare my undying love to her when I myself did not know that it existed? It’s not like one fine day, I looked into the mirror and there it was written on my forehead - “You love Shruti”. How do you know you are in love? Love does not hit you in one blow; it creeps upon on you so slowly that you are amazed that you have been its prey. First it barely touches you. You do not even recognize it. Then it appears fleetingly. It disappears even before you realize that something is happening. You aren’t even sure if it was real or it was just your imagination. You dismiss it away from your thoughts. Then she comes running breathlessly out of her home, her dupatta trying to keep up with her and you realize there is a strange stirring in your heart. You promise to analyze the feeling but the rest of the evening goes away so uneventfully that you do not think about it. Until, it rears its head the next time you see her. Now you know that something is going on. She is not the same old Shruti anymore. Something about her is captivating you. You want to keep standing there looking at her talk forever, you are restless when she is late in her meeting with you, you feel like crying when she’s leaving on a vacation, she has not left and you are already thinking about your next meeting with her. Yes that’s when you realize love has been standing for quite a long time knocking at your heart. You let it in unwittingly, watching helplessly as it consumes your entire being.