Love has no boundaries. All the folklores, ancient poems and stories that sing praises of beautiful love stories are worth a read.
That’s where I got my love for romantic and unique love stories. I loved to read books that made me believe in love and like a lovestruck puppy, I wanted to find my soulmate in the nooks and corners of the city’s libraries. It was my own little fantasy.
But when you have beautiful things planned in your mind, life tries to make it difficult for you to experience it. But I fell in love in the most natural way; one that I had always dreamed of. My friends would say that I was an old woman in the body of a 22-year-old because of how I loved old-school romance. My mind wandered off to love poems and books and that’s when, one fated day, I met him.
Being one of the few people who still visited libraries, while I was skimming through books, looking for an old edition of the ‘The Great Gatsby’, my hand accidentally brushed off a stranger’s hand who picked up the same book as me. I immediately bolted my hand off and the gentleman looked at me and gave me a quick smile.
“Are you also looking for the great gatsby?†I nodded and he gave me the book. And with a thank you, I mentioned he could pick up Wuthering Heights which was just beside it. And with that, our conversation started. He was a great lover of books, especially those that gave out a stale, old smell that only us, book lovers would understand. He looked like he was in his mid-forties; there was a different aura to him that seemed quite familiar and warm to me. And next, how he described his love for Jay Gatsby made me fall in love with him.
So yes, that’s how easily I fell in love with a stranger.
The little romantic in me screamed at the opportunity. We met in the same library every week where he would talk about literature, poetry and his favourite characters. His eyes shone every time he talked about books and I loved his company. This went on for quite some time as I looked forward to the day in the library every week. It made me hopeful. I was in love with him. I didn’t know much about him but his personality was enough to make me fall for him. He was older but that didn’t stop my heart.
Until one day, he brought a little girl with him. She was a cute little girl who bore a resemblance to the man. And obviously, turns out, she was his daughter. Of course. Why wouldn’t such a wonderful man like him have a family? We three sat together while he talked to us both about worldly literature. And as they left the library, I saw both of them go to a beautiful woman. The three then walked off hand-in-hand. Just then, I felt a painful pang in my heart that crushed my love. I somehow knew there was nothing much to this love but I still fell for him.
He still comes by the library and we still talk. He probably never knew that I had fallen for him. And I didn’t want him to know that too because I was just a 22-year-old woman who had fallen in love with a married man. It was my little secret that I will keep with myself.
By Debomitra Das