“I want Paper Towns by John Green as my B’day Present.”, by HAC

“I want Paper Towns by John Green as my B’day Present.”

Mausam Guzar jate hai,
yaadeein nhi Guzarti…

We never plan Break-ups and when they occur, we feel that there are millions of things left unsaid. Millions of those unsaid words start echoing in your head and you cannot help it because you are a human being not a volcano. We don’t have an option to erupt. We can just feel the gigantic uneasiness. We feel someone is trying to pull out our heart. However, it isn’t our heart that is getting pulled away. It is the heart of our loved ones. The heart that we assumed is ours.  We give them our heart and when they take away their heart as well, we are left with this uneasiness and suffocation that breaks up at the rate of per second.

Ansh was feeling the same since last few days. There wasn’t any damage. It was just crumbling. His soul was crumbled and his heart was shrunken.  The sadness on his face was palpable. He wake up and went to washroom. The eye contact between him and a different person in mirror revealed the truth to him. He hastily pulled out his cellphone to text her. Opening his watsapp, he just stared at her Display picture for n number of minutes.

She was wearing a white suit with red colored working on front. A strip of diamonds was stitched on its boundaries. She wasn’t wearing any neckpiece. Her face had the taste of beauty. It was jeweled by two long circular pearly earrings, the nose ring she used to rotate in and out of her nose, and her smile. She was not online. He typed the text and instead of sending it, he cut all the text and pasted it in the ‘Notes’ of his cellphone.

He was doing it since a long time. There were 96 Notes. Few were poems. Few were those unsaid words and few were the ashes of their abruptly broken relationship.  His pupils fixed on the screen and he read the forth note of it. It was “I want Paper Towns by John Green for my birthday.”

Reading the note, he was lost in the memories and the crumbled incomplete life he had.  A tear trickled down his eyes. He felt it and  keeping his phone in his pocket, splashed water  on his face. He looked again in the mirror. He couldn’t recognize the tear but he did recognize the pain that was glued to his skin and soul, something that remained un-washable.   

“You haven’t bought me any birthday present,” Bulb over his head glowed.  His birthday was three months back and today he realized that his own girlfriend hasn’t gifted him any birthday present. (Except few smooches, kisses.)

However, she had wished me almost 100 times. He thought.

“What do you want?” She giggled over the phone call.

“Ummm… Something…. I don’t know surprise me.”

He heard the “Ummmm” on the other side as well. “No, tell me what do you want?”

“I don’t know.” He said.

The conversation that was supposed to be one of the cute moments of their life was now a painful one. It felt like every memory was a poisonous snake that would do nothing but kill him as late as possible. He had a long crumbled life ahead to live. He thought of diverting his mind. He took a shower and got ready for god knows where. He assembled all his pieces and went  somewhere where he could see people. The room was killing him. He wanted to see someone, even if random faces in crowd. He could control his tears in public because it was too difficult to hold back tears when he was alone.

He sat on a random bench and dialed his best-friend’s number. He didn’t feel like going away from crowd for personal space. He knew that he was alone.

“Hey,” She said in her most exciting voice.

“Hey,” He sounded emotionless.

“I cannot get over her. Today, I intentionally opened the ‘Notes’, read the Notes that belonged to us and now I am feeling like crying.” He explained what he went through.

 “Why don’t you delete the notes?” She asked him. The question was followed with a long lecture on how he must move on. He had no power to fight. He did not want to feel any emotion or anything else. He felt as if if  any emotion went through him, it would leave the door of emotions open and later he would have to feel the pain and turning off emotions was not an easy task for him.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

He disconnected the call. Next thing he had to do was delete those notes. He stared at the screen. Opened the notes and clicked on ‘Select All’ button. Before hitting the delete button, he realized that it was less painful to stay with this unbearable pain rather than deleting her memories. Instead of deleting them, he opened the watsapp and stared at her DP again. It was a pleasing pain.

He came back to his room. Locked it. Turned off the Lights. And… left the door of pain open because he had decided. He cuddled his pillow when  tears rivered down his eyes. He hid himself under the blanket and blabbered, “I want Paper Towns by John Green as my B’day Present.”  

by:

Himanshu Appie Chhabra