Dedications To A Girl With The Glasses 4, Or, Being Asked When I Learnt The Meaning Of Love Poem by Souren Mondal

'When did you learn the meaning of
Love? ', asked the Girl with the
Glasses once,

'It was on an occasion', said I,
'a very strange one.
It's a story that is hard to tell
but it was when I was with this
tiny baby girl,
and she was desperate for some help,
someone to support her,
because she was crying
and was in tremendous pain,
I tried my heart out to soothe her,
without caring twopence about
anything or anyone in the world...

I have known her before
I have loved her before,
and yet I have never really known her,
I never really loved her the way
I loved her at that moment.

It was that moment
that taught me what it was to love
and the beauty of it.

Since then I never stopped loving.'

That baby girl was you Neena,
my Girl with the Glasses,
The time you went ahead and said
that you were ravish'd by a brutal
monster,

An evil avatar of Rudra,
who took you by force against your
will,
beating you with a belt
and leaving marks on you,
I did cry...

It was that moment that rekindled
All my love for you,
The fire that I had kept inside my heart
came to the fore.

And I trusted you woman,
Woman in spectacles,
Trusted your pains,
Trusted your loneliness,
Trusted each one of your words (most of which were 'melodramatic overexpressions') ,

Taking you as if you were my own
child,
Loving you like a father lover his daughter,
a protective, caring love,

Love that made me be with you as much as
I could,
listening to your each words,
taking them in,
taking in your pains,

I kept you company in your lonely
nights,
I gave you a space in which you
could vent all your emotions,

I listened to your stories,
all of them.

Now tell me Neena,
if this was just a crush and not love,
what does love mean to you?

You said you never knew
I loved you,
When I told you that I did

You said you never knew again,
when I told you same on
your birthday.

And I still stood by you,
believing each and every one of your
words,
Giving you all I had,
until I was almost left with nothing.

And it was only when I was
fighting a daemon inside my head,
And a horrible, pathetic pain
inside my heart,

That I did ask you,
like a poor child,
For some time to
reclaim a little bit of myself,
Lost amidst an abyss of
nothingness,

I wanted to regain,
my sanity,
my purpose in life,
my will to live,


And all you did was to come up with
another one of your melodramatic overexpressions,
hitting me right in the heart with your words,
Throwing me farther into that pit of nothingness,
into that abyss,
from where no one can come out...

Was a little sympathy too much to ask for?

I understood that you loved me not,
I understood you still wanted me there,
As your friend.

But did you not believe
that your friend too was so much in
pain?


All I ever wanted from you were a
few kind words,
particularly at that time,

I called you my daughter,
Loved you as much as that,

And I knew you'd never love me in the same way,
Or anyway,

But a little compassion lady,
Is a little compassion too much to ask for?

When did I not stand up to you?
When did I not make myself available
to you?

Did all that meant nothing?

You may still say that I loved you not,
But what is Love then, my dear lady,
but standing up for another?
But giving another all of one's time
and attention?

If whatever I felt for you,
whatever I did,
was not love,
Then no man had ever knew what it
was to love a woman,

And no woman had probably understood
what a man's love is.

If you actually did not really
understand that all that I did for you
or am doing now
(Yes these poems)
Is not but a sign of my love,

Then believe me lady,
Lady with spectacles on your eyes
You never understood my love,
And neither you probably ever will.