Thoibi, Thoibi, I always told you those men who come to pick you up in their flashy vehicles only look at you with imagined pleasure. In the company of them you expected love. It was a mistake. You remember Khoibah from your school? All that he did for you sprung out of impulsive love. At nights he rolled in his cold bed picturing your face and fantasizing a life which you didn't even know. He never said no, he would brave the harsh winter and come running to you barefoot if you had asked him.
Then you never understood why he always kept a diary and the day before he had disappeared he left the diary at your gate. Didn't you find it wrapped in frost? It was just a notebook which belonged to a person who was in love with you, but then you didn't know the meaning of those words. Some of the pages were pasted with dry rose petals from a rose which he had meant to give it to you. In fact, it was rose from the plant he planted and watered every day so that he could get the best for you. Though the roses were not as big as those one can pick at the markets, he attached a lot of himself to it.
You remember the day he came to school hair combed, as though it had been licked by a cow's tongue, shoes polished and clothes well-pressed. He wrapped the best rose for you in Huyen Lanpao newspaper and carried it with great care for several hours. You both were going to finish school , and all that he wanted to see was your smiling face with the red in your hand looking at him. It didn' t happen.
At the school gate he waited for you all alone, and you knew he was there waiting for you. But, he wasn't your type, those guys in funky clothes who always came to school in cars and flashy motorbikes. He could never be in their league, nor did he have the desire to be one among. You, to him, were the Moon which would delight and give hope to a restless soul. Ever wondered how he must have walked the fog-veiled nights with the Moon above his head when the whole place was soaked in the fragrance of Thabal Lei(cestrum noncturnum) . After those long restless hours he would come back to his diary to write poems for you. He kept a lot to himself and it seemed like the diary was another place where he could pour in almost all the unspoken words.
Though that day you didn't take his rose he was happy to have seen your face. When you sat in Khamba's car he saw you laughing, he wished you had been like that in his presence.But he was happy that you were happy, and that was more than enough. What he felt was not built on what he had gathered from what he had heard or read. It just came to him naturally and gripped him and enslaved him, and he was happy, happy to have been in that state.
How could one person's impulsive feeling was never understood! When had learned that there was no chance to be loved, he secretly wished you happiness and love.
The school days finally came to an end, you were planning to go to another city for college education. He stayed back though he wanted to be so much in the city where you would be living. The thought that you would be far away and would not get to see you troubled him. Knowing that you were around and he could see you once in while was a comfort , but to court the certainty that you would be thousand of kilometres away was unbearable.
In the end he reconciled; told himself it was the life and he would have to live and there was no getting away from it.
It was the day you were to leave the place, he hadn't slept. He rode his bicycle from Singjamei to Khurai, and left the diary at you gate with the hope that, at least , you would find it. You discovered it as a strange thing and out of curiosity you had kept it, but you never read the words, didn't even look for the dry rose petals.
At a time like this when you were left all alone feeling betrayed, and the whole world came crashing down over your head you began to flip the pages. You had read thick books, hundred of poems and after those years of reading and re-reading , writing for others and reading what others wanted you to read, for you were paid, you still felt unloved.
It had been more than a decade since you had finished school, now you were troubled adult. What the years had given you? Money, colleagues who would be referred to as pals, love,which was born out of convenience and momentary desire. You wanted to be loved, get back what you had given. Why expect something so capricious and as slippery as an eel.
It existed and was revealed to you, but you hadn't paid attention.Then you were drowned in ignorance. Now, you could see the feelings of that man in that diary. He was always aloof, seen alone ,but he was friendly and good-looking, too. But he had long been dead.
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