THE BRIDGE

She didn’t mention. Yet he knew. Already.

The phone call wasn’t out of the blue. It was the daily routine late night call which refreshed her voice in his head. Some days they had lots of “important stuff” to tell each other while on other days, they had nothing to talk about. Yet the phone call was mandatory and every day he waited for the Cinderella hour impatiently.

Their story was pretty ordinary. They had met at the college canteen and got acquainted. But it was during a picnic that their love bloomed. He loved the bridge. It was small bridge over a man-made water body. It was there where they had first spent some time together. He always thought the bridge connected their souls. The bridge was the symbol of their love; it bridged two individuals into one soul.

But for the past two months, things were not as they used to be. He couldn’t put a finger on the exact change but he could feel it. His chubby-chirpy-cute cherub is as chubby and cute as she was yet the cheeriness has evaporated to unmask a cold crispiness. Though it scared him yet he was helpless. He wasn’t good at talking his heart out, or that is what he felt. So his calls became  more frequent and he started showering her with more gifts than ever.

There’s a limit. Though folks thought of her as a sensible sensitive sweet simpleton yet she had been harbouring a deep seated desire to become famous and rich. She did nothing half-heartedly, and worked towards fulfilling her dream. She didn’t believe in talking big and always let her actions speak louder. She has never been crazy romantic type but was not anti-romance either. So when love came calling, she let herself in the web of love. Her only fault was, she always let her heart do what it wanted but only after hearing out her brain.

Soon the romance began to take a toll on her. Instead of feeling the spring in her steps, she began to feel suffocated. She wanted to fly high and reach out to the sun. But he was bent on clipping her wings. He reminded her, the sun would burn her. Soon she began missing her old self; her smiles did not reach her eyes any more.

She had to make a decision. It was not easy to throw away a generous loving guy who was proud to present her to the world, one who called her his better half publicly. But he was clingy, emotionally needy and craved for her attention. All the time. Her presence, her voice made his ecstatic. Despite it all, he too deserved to be happy. How could one expect her to make him happy if she wasn’t happy herself?

They met at the bridge. One look at his face and she knew that he knew. It did not make anything easy for her. She owed him an explanation and she would give him one. Hence, the bridge.|
She said, “you are a very nice individual and so am i. Yes I am a good girl, believe it or not” and she paused trying to make the situation lighter, “but sometimes two nice individuals cannot form a nice symbiotic relationship. Remember how you equated this wooden bridge with our love? Yes it indeed is the symbol of our love. We are so different that we cannot be bridged together and if tried, it won’t be a strong one just as this bridge is not. Perhaps a pretty one but one whose foundation would shake too often. So why not part ways and lead happier lives?”
He sighed and said, “if you want to go, I won’t stop you but let me tell you you will never find anyone else like me”.

She kept mum. Her heart knew he was hurt and it let him feel he had the last words but it is her brain who had had retorted, “note to self: that is exactly the point, duh”.