The casualty postings of  our internship consists of 10 night duties and it was during one of the nights that I and Aakanksha had our slot from 3”o” clock to 9 “o” clock. It was winter and at nights there are usually very few cases that come upto the hospital other than the dire emergencies like the asthmatics or chest pain.  Just to keep us awake and to while away time, we spoke, of many things.  As it happens with every conversation there was a pause where we may not have anything to say, but are interested to listen.  “Tell me about sameer and Anu’s love” she said.  Sameer is my best friend and there will be few people who knew about him quiet intimately, other than me.  But to talk about his and Anu’s love and that too Aakanksha with whom I always keep quarrelling be it at work or during exams, it sounded different.

           Ok then, to start with, it was in our first year, Sameer and Anu got to know each other.  Sameer, 6 feet tall, slim, handsome wheatish complexion with charming manners, was of course the hot stuff of our batch.  I still remember, it was Anu who proposed and theirs was the first couple of our class.  In the beginning , I was against it , for reasons of my own , but gradually I found they where quiet comfortable with each other; what else do use new in love when we fell at home with some one.  Like all lovers, theirs too consisted of roses and cards and chocolates. Sameer bought his bike and the lovers were always on the road.  Sameer made an average of 70km a day at times.  Though there were many other couples in our campus, theirs was something different and I used to always keep tickling Sameer or pretend to have a serious face at Anu, of course for fun. Gradually, things didn’t turn out all cheerful when the results came and may be Anu’s parents could sense that there was a boy in her life.  Well it happens usually, just as in films but in their case, I could see that it was more a strain and it was quiet evident in their behavior.  Many times, I just turned a blind eye when they were in trouble.  I didn’t mean them harm; all I wanted was that they learn to cope up.  And on one rainy night in July Sameer took me and a few of us boys to a near by dhaba and said that he wants to marry Anu as early as possible.  Though it wasn’t an unexpected phrase from Sameer, it was very crucial at that moment because our exams.  The thought of marriage was something quiet far off for us boys who generally kept living a bachelor’s life.  Sameer was very confident when he was saying so and we were sure that he would get married even without our help.

           None of us knew of how things get on with couples after their marriage and in fact we weren’t married either, that we would be of a status to give advices.  Any way, let things be the way they’ll be, we were prepared to do our best.  The notary certificate and mangal sutra, temple registration according to Hindu marriage act, photos and party were all done in a span of 24hours.  Sameer bought a sari for Anu and we bought a ring for here, a party was arranged at a three star hotel.  Every thing was funded by the money we boys could collect among ourselves.   It was a small amount but of course it was fun.  Well, now, both Sameer and Anu have passed their exams, their parents accepted them and they have a sweet home close to our hospital.

           This was all I told to Aakansha, a few things which she already knew, I had omitted while talking, and they have been included for any reader who isn’t acquainted to Sameer or Anu. I found that Aakanksha didn’t take it with all the fervor I had in saying it.  There was another patient to attend to and the conversation came to a halt. 

            What made me thinking later on was that all I talked about was regarding my involvement, the way I helped them an adventure of a sort and all. It didn’t contain anything pertaining to their love as such.  I had kept on narrating it as if its some 18 reel DTS commercial film contains all the hero stuff we did.

           A relation which came through successful out of six years of togetherness must have many things quiet subtle which my thick head never did notice at all.  May be I’ll just give a try and let me recollect a few things.

           One of the simplest and yet the most difficult of the phases of life is the time when he/she is in love.  It’s not completely like ‘Barbie met Ken; they fell in love, married and lived happily ever after’. He/she needs to feel that love in every moment, not just as a compulsion but as easy as we breathe; no thought required, no effort required voluntarily, but that’s the driving 

Force for our existence – breath.

           Now let’s take the view of the best man regarding the bride. Anu is someone with a simple and straight goal in her life.  She wants a man who’ll be strong, caring tender yet enduring any trouble that’s going to shoot up on her path.  Well, every girl wants a man as such but what’s so special about Anu is that she has her own way of living with such a man.  She is 100% possessive about Sameer. She isn’t the sort who demands things, in fact I haven’t heard Anu asking Sameer to give her a rose, and it was always as if she knows that Sameer has got a rose for her in the top left pocket of his shirt which just is going to be given in the most graceful way.  Even when it comes to chatting for a while, she’s the one who sits cool and composed, listening to all what Sameer has to say and giggling at the jokes.  Don’t you ever get the feeling that she is not in the circle of conversation, and for gods sake, don’t you ever try to let her sit a bit more close to your group, she will be the most embarrassed person on earth.  All you got to do is just to tempt Sameer to give an off remark; she'll put an alert face, knit her eyebrows and pat his sweet silly head for it.  The magic works, Sameer is sure to say something to color her up in the next couple of minutes.  It’s as if the princess knows that her prince is always with her and she is just beside him, though he may be quiet far, geographically.  Her silence doesn’t mean that she is feeling alone, it means that she’s confident that her man is still holding her hand gently.

            And when Sameer is away to see his parents, Anu isn’t bothered of what he‘ll get for her from Hyderabad. A phone call intimating that he has reached safely or that he is going out to shop will do wonders to her you can’t put it as ‘nagging’ because she never intends to be so Sameer will surely ring her up, after all that’s what ‘loving’ means.  Woman’s rights Organization means nothing to her, every woman must know to keep her man, he‘ll take care of her rights, simply put, that’s what she does.  She isn’t bothered to outsmart her husband no happiness she finds in it, all she likes is that her man always says the things she likes to hear.  The best way any guy can persuade her to let Sameer  attend the ‘all-guys’ party would be is to leave his wife at Sameer’s place, informing that she too would be missing her man.  That works, Anu listen to all what yours wife has to say about you, may be thy will go out for a shopping or cook a new recipe but it always means that Sameer is going to be hungry when he return from the party and would hug her, give a peck on her cheeks for the hearty meal must have missed in case he had stayed at his friends party. Wants so special about it is that when you take your wife home; may be she will stitch the button or two on your favorite white shirt you have been reminding her about since so long.  That’s Anu, to put it brief.

           Sameer always like to quote this saying ‘you may do as you please, but listen to your wife’. He wasn’t so in his marriage. He not only did listen to his wife, but also got her involved in the work he had plan to accomplish.  Please don’t take it as rebuke, and don’t try to experiment it on your spouse.  It will be next to impossible, I will bet.  A couple of years ago, I and Sameer were on our bike to his aunt’s place.  It was sun-down and getting dark, I put on the lights, just for the sake of doing so.  An auto just crossed our road, no lights or an alerting horn too.  A big screech and stop, the usual scene in Warangal. The driver got our and started to shout just for a sake of making a scene of it.  May be it took me a few moments to pull myself, but Sameer was at him, a fierce face and that tough voice to break the crowd away.  It did break the crowd any way.  I have never seen Sameer that way before and even before I could acknowledge it, he took me to the nearest café, chat and chai to ease the stress and then we were back on the road.

          Many times, you want somebody, to give you a shoulder no big lecture about safety rules or ‘you got to be taught with these guys’ attitude.  He knew that things were wrong, he set it right and then he’s back his same self. You get bound to people like him, who says slavery has been abolished!  The next time you meet him, you see him as that ‘strong man’ but god! He doesn’t take airs of being all that at all.  May be now, you understood when I said “He‘ll listen to his wife and even get here work for what he wishes to do’.  What ‘Listen to” meant in the proverb was ‘to feel’. You can’t be good to some one without earnestly feeling their pain.  May be that was what he had done when Anu was branded ‘too outspoken’ by the whole class.  A pink colored greeting card.  A dairy milk chocolate and a red rose weren’t all that he had given here that day, six years ago.  For your kind information, the card didn’t mention anything like ‘love’, it meant friendship and caring as most of the cards go; but take me seriously, can there be love without the ‘friendship’ and caring’?

          All these that I've written have just taken me a couple of hours and few foolscap papers but it took Anu and Sameer six long years to make possible.

            Hope I’ll some day say it all to Aakansha, plainly as it is rather than as what all I had been in their lives, I am just waiting.

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