Love is it??...Part 6

Seven months had passed since the child grew within the womb. Each day the mother woke up thinking of the sweet pain of that birth. And each day the anticipated pain seduced her to love the foetus that grew within her even more fiercely.

The delectable thrusts of pregnancy impregnated her with the memories of that act that made her blossom like this - undulating in love perhaps. But how can one be sure about love ever? All that she could know by now is that romance and love do not coexist, can not coexist. They only remained like misfits forced to be sworn at together but destined to remain as antithesis.

That was the first day they met. Between bites of pizza and spilled drinks, lay some crumbs of unexplained yet felt romance. But then who ever feels in sync with the other? Love is never about being in sync. That's romance, that's relationship, that's mutual and shared compromise. Love is about the ultimate attainment of individual egos that are uniquely never in sync but almost always enriching. Love is about completing the half - the incomplete halves.

Their methods were different, forms many but the goal - yes, he said 'goal', result - to claim, to attain, to possess, to be fulfilled, at any cost, perhaps the same. The world is, afterall, about control, containment, confinement, about swallowing and interring within what one likes and what one can like. The world defines success just like that. Even successful love. But there is something charming about stirred yet undrunk coffee before it is consumed.

Well, she did succeed. She possessed his essence in her womb - the essence that drove her in crazy ecstasy each day she woke. Each morning ran her hands over her lower abdomen and smiled to herself. She was indecently happy in that surrender of her self to her man in that momentous moment of sheer rapture; for she believed in the essential freedom of love. The freedom where romance is an unnecessary compulsion. She waited for that one day when the child she bore shall spill out of her womb on its own and say, 'i set you free, to be mine.'

And she waited to be trusted like that. To be held like that. Free - without control. She waited - patiently, very patiently to be kissed and set free to be his in her own way - completely, madly, totally. That day never came. The child did. But the words never came. Perhaps the trust never came.

He was insanely happy with her. Happy to be loved, to be taken care of, to be pampered. He was happy to possess, to claim and to authorise. He wanted a mother, she became one. He wanted a friend, she tried to be one. He wanted a partner - she strove hard to fit in. She lost herself bit by bit only to discover he wanted her mind that he can control. And in return offered his mind to be occupied with her thoughts. Perhaps she did not want his gifts. Perhaps she did not want anything. Perhaps she wanted only him - but totally him. He, she figured, shall never do that.

They had rebelled in love - fiercely and violently. They debated, shouted and cried - together - to claim that one ground where they could build their love. The house was to be of his bricks and the home of her dreams. She asked him to dream a little and moved forward to add a couple of bricks. With this, the earth threatened to shatter. Perhaps it was too much for the man to take and the woman to give.

The child smiles in the womb, meanwhile. It drank her blood and would have got his name for that five - ten minutes of selfish worship of each others' bodies. But did it need a name? Could she survive with her creation on her own? She knew no answers except the fact that she knew her capability.

She knew that her dignity, honour and identity did not lie between her legs alone. She knew she was more than what she was possessed and sought for. And she did know that beyond that she could not and would not offer any more of herself - to any one. Her mind was as free to think, to dream, to transgress and to transform as it had been till now in its gradual surrender, its willing imprisonment, its consenting conscription, its volitional confinement, its ever ready modulation - for him and only him.

She was tired of a long wait. She was losing interest in the anticipation of this acceptance that what was hers shall remain only hers. And that she shall part with that only and solely on her conditions. She was ready to live with unrequited love and unfulfilled desires than unrealised herself.

She looked at her womb and she looked back at him. She had made her choice. Clearly. He was as free to come along as she was free to love him.