Chapter 13
DR ISHAN MALHOTRA
I confessed to Avni about my feelings, finally and felt as if a burden was lightened from my shoulders.
‘It’s wonderful, doctor Ishan!’ Avni said.
‘What?’ I was perplexed. I thought she would slap me, or would say I love you too, if I was dreaming, but this answer was out of the blues.
‘Telling a girl I love you, in the middle of a river, on a boat which you have paid for, in one sense, making her helpless, so she can’t go out anywhere and neither can she do anything, right? So, wonderful!’
‘No, Avni…listen, I didn’t plan on proposing to you here, in fact I was asking for a two room boat, you saw me, right? Believe me Avni, trust me…’
‘I love you too…’
‘WHAT?’ This answer confirmed that I was dreaming, hell, it couldn’t be a dream either, because Avni never says ‘I love you too’ even in my dreams! What the hell was happening then?’
‘I said, I love you too…’ Avni kissed me on my lips.
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’ I pushed her back as if she was trying to rape me.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘What’s wrong with you, Avni?’ I counter questioned her.
‘This is how a girl replies if she wants to spend the rest of her life with you, doctor Ishan!’
‘Oh, yes…I’m sorry…come, let’s resume it, where were we?’
‘What the hell? What do you think it is? A movie? Or a video that you can pause it and resume it according to your wish?’
‘No, I mean, you don’t understand me, right now, I think I’ve gone mad…I am totally out of my mind, I know I’m behaving stupid, but Avni…’ before I said anything else, I felt her lips against mine once again.
Instead of asking anymore questions, I kissed her back and harder. I sucked her lips, bit on them, licked them and held her face in mine. She opened her eyes gently and found me rubbing my forehead against her.
‘I love you so much, Avni…’ I whispered and kissed her again.
There was peace all around, no noise, no voices, nothing, just peace. I could hear the boatman pushing the water aside for the boat to ride and I could hear birds chirping as they went back to their nests. Today, I felt like a bird, who had found my nest, my home, a place I could call my own.
I held Avni from her shoulders and made her lie down on the only bed that was there in the boat.
‘Are you comfortable?’
‘I told you, I will adjust…’ she whispered. I started kissing her again. This time, harder and with more passion. It wasn’t the first time I was kissing a girl, but it was the first time I was kissing a girl I loved! I slid her top from her shoulder and bit on her neckline. She moaned in pleasure, and I continued kissing and biting her. For the rest of the night, we didn’t talk, we didn’t say a word, we just made love.
There’s a huge difference in sex and making love. We have sex with someone who can satisfy us physically, but we make love to someone who can satisfy us soulfully and eternally. Once you realize the fine-line between making love and having sex, you will understand the meaning of life! Life isn’t only about survival, it’s about living and so is making love. We have sex to satisfy our lust and hunger, which is nothing, but survival, but we make love to feed our soul and our mind, to fill a void that is there since a long time, that longs for a partner and that needs someone whom we want to spend the next morning with!
When you have sex just for physical pleasure, you might be ashamed or even guilty at one point of life or another, for disrespecting your body, for lending it out to someone you didn’t love but merely lusted for, but when you make love to someone who means everything to you, you are always proud of it. Never in life, not even a single time, you regret that time and the moments spent with that person. You will always rejoice it and remember it with equal passion and joy.
There are girls, that boys look out for spending a night with, and then there are girls, that boys look out for spending a beautiful morning with. Avni was the latter lady for me. I wished to spend a morning with her, where I could wake up next to her and see her innocent face, I could embrace her in my arms and I could love her right from the first second of my day. That was the kind of love I had for Avni.
The night was spent in making love and telling each other how much the other person meant to us. Avni thanked me for everything I did for her and I thanked Avni for simply coming to me with her problem in the first place. I told her how mad I was for her, since the day she had joined the hospital, and she laughed about it. We spent entire night in each other’s arms, naked, but we weren’t ashamed of it!
‘It’s so good to have a guy like you, Ishan…’ Avni kissed my chest.
‘I know, girls say that when they realize the love of poor guys like us. But not every guy is as lucky as me! There still are guys who are trying to make their voice reach to the girl they love, but they’re simply not confident enough, what about them?’
‘I know…but you see, everything happens for a reason! If they are meant to be together, they will end up being together, no matter today, or tomorrow or after that, but they will. It’s not about your voice reaching out to the girl you love, it’s about the intensity with which you love her! It is said, you know…that if you love something with all you have, nature conspires to make both ends meet!’
I kissed on her lips and slept next to her. I didn’t know whether her words had any substance or not, but in my case, nature did conspire to make both ends meet!
24 Hours Later
Next evening, we were on Cherai Beach in Cochin. We sipped some coconut water from the huge coconut shells, laughed, clicked some photos, and asked the couples around to click photos of us together, and spent an entire day like that, in fun and frolic!
Never had I thought that I’ll be this close to Avni and that she’ll reciprocate my feelings with equal intensity, but whatever happened, made me sure about one thing – God did exist!