Koi Jab Tumhaara Hriday Tod De... Part II

This is part two of a story I began yesterday. If you haven’t read it… please read it before you proceed. You will find it here… Koi Jab Tumhaara Hriday tod de…Part I 

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My dear Annu, 

I read your mail. You know my regard… my love… for you well enough to know what the knowledge of your pain is doing to me. But that is not what I wanted to talk about. Nor indeed am I going to offer you hackneyed phrases and empty platitudes. I know when one is in pain… words of encouragement sound so futile. I will not insult your intelligence by uttering them. 

Your mail reminded me of a wound I sustained sometime back. Don’t worry, it hasn’t reopened. It hurts… with the pain of a past pain… the pain which loses its sting because it has been buried already. You and I met nearly 8 months back… right? By that time it was almost 5 months since I had broken up with HIM. Who he was… what he did… and what happened… is not really important. What struck me yesterday was the similarity in our experiences. You got cheated… lied to… taken for a ride… even financially looted… by a sleaze-ball. So did I. Only I met the sleaze-ball live… offline. I wish you would keep this is mind first of all. Point here, is that all that happened to you, did NOT happen because you met him online… AND that it won’t help if you promise yourself never to have friends online again. This could as well have happened to you offline. In fact, then it would have hurt you even more. Now you have the excuse to say… “Oh, I wasn’t able to fathom his lies… it was easy for him because of the distance.” 

I have no such excuse. 

I met him everyday. I talked to him for hours. I looked into his eyes… I, who pride myself on my ability to read people’s eyes… Can you imagine how foolish I felt? I clearly remember 2 instances when he looked deep into my eyes… held my gaze… and lied to me. And I not only believed him… I cursed myself for having doubted him in the first place. The guilt of misjudging him made bitter bile rise in my throat. Even today the memory of that feeling makes me cringe in a shame too deep to describe. 

All this is not easy for me to write. You know me to be a proud woman. But my pride is nothing in the face of your pain. Nor am I writing to you in order to show you my pain and tell you, “Oh This happens to everyone.” The implied expectation behind each such statement, I have found, is to say that it must be accepted by you… since it happens to everyone. I can never understand that monstrosity of that thought. It is too unfair. I am not even writing this in order to cry on your shoulder… and for us to be miserable together. 

A state of misery... of despair… of giving up… is inherently alien to my nature. I find the concept too contemptible for words. I hate being in such a state. It is almost a question of pride… For me to stay in that kind of disempowered state is to renege on my life… and I can never bear that. I am able to talk to you this way because I know you will understand what I am saying… because you love your life too… as much as I do. That was the thing which attracted me to you the most. We speak the same language- you and I. I know right now it seems to you that life is only pain… and that you don’t give a whit for your life. Do you know why you suffer…? Maybe it is because life’s capacity to give joy is what has been violated with this whole sequence of events. If this is not love for life… I don’t know what it is. 

I know the word torturing you the most is WHY. Let me try to explain what little I understand of this. It seemed so monstrously stupid for HIM to go into that sequence of lies. Surely he must have known he would be found out one day. Why… how… then could he permit himself to get in such a potentially false position? That was my question. When I found no answer to it… I began thinking maybe my basic premise is wrong. I am operating out of a premise of person of integrity… which would not permit me to lie to myself. What if that was not his premise? What I had done, at some point of time, was to project my own premise… even my own value system… and my priorities on him. Thereafter, I was looking only at a reflection. He wasn’t there anymore. 

What if, for him, not being caught in a falsehood was not important enough? And more… what if it was a non-issue because he never thought it possible he would ever be put in such a position? What if he was able to lie to himself perfectly? He could keep cheating while outwardly maintain a façade of uprightness. He was able to effortlessly cleave himself into two people. The dichotomy was so seamless that he was never conscious of its existence. He knew himself to be an honest man… I don’t claim to understand the exact process with which he could pretend to himself that he was not the honest man he was projecting himself to be. But one thing is for sure. That is exactly what he did. Even after he was found out, he saw himself as the injured party… the victim. Hence his malevolence… his belligerence… towards me. 

I am sure you blame yourself for getting duped. What I am trying to explain to you is that you must not. How could you not be duped? You cannot even conceive of the level of soul corruption he had. You are clean and innocent. I know I asked God once why he brought that man into my life. I had never seen filth in my life before… and then to come so close to something of this kind…! But then I guess God knew I’ll need to talk to you one day… that is why I had to go through it. To tell you the truth, it would make the whole thing acceptable to me now... if my words prove to be of help to you. 

The only thing for which you can perhaps reproach yourself is your inability to investigate properly… for loving too well but not wisely perhaps. See what we do, is we assume a lot of things about people. We like 2 or 3 things about them and we jump to the conclusion that they are like us… they think like we do in pertinent issues. The biggest mistake we make is to project our value system on to another person on the basis of a few surface similarities. With that one act we set ourselves up for exactly the kind of experience we have both gone through.
Do you remember how annoyed you got one day- while we were chatting- at my endless questions? We had begun interacting just a week back and there were a few things I had liked about you. But I had to ask you questions… lots of questions. Querying you about the same things in many different sentence constructions. Actually, that was the reason you got annoyed…. Remember? Because you cottoned on to me. You saw I was basically fencing around the same basic issues… only coming at them from different angles. I can tell you today why I did it. If you were lying, somewhere you would have contradicted yourself. Then I would have been wary. 

But it didn’t happen. I am not saying the process is fool-proof. But it is far better than nothing at all. You know I have two very close friends. One of them taught me to ask questions. He knew I was the kind of person who would ask a question once… and maybe one more time. If I don’t get a straight answer, I would stop asking. He told me that was the wrong thing to do… that it made easy for people to cheat me. He forced me to ask questions… and to keep on asking… until I got a straight answer. He told me the more difficult it is for the other person to answer a question involving ethics… the more essential it is for ME to get an answer. Just a question of being tenacious enough… the contradictions… the mismatch… the deliberate misleading… if they are there… will surface. They really do. It is amazing and thrilling. Because each time it happens… I know how much I have to interact with a person. How close… or how far… I have to keep them. This was what my second friend taught me. How to keep being friendly… but to have a clear definition of the DEGREE of friendliness. Where to draw the line… what not to share… where to stop. 

These two things have helped me a lot. I am not afraid to open my heart to people. I have learnt how to investigate and evaluate. I am not afraid to trust. For I know how much to trust and where to put up the walls. I can say confidently today that I am not afraid of meeting new people and forging new friendships. That makes me feel so good. Just imagine, if I hadn’t learnt it all, I would have missed out on you and all my other net friends. And surely would never have learnt all this if it hadn’t been for the sleaze-ball. Guess he served his purpose after all… in the same manner as the fertilizer serves its purpose in the growth of a plant. And so, I am not even angry with him anymore. Pity him… the poor blind guy. 

This has become a long mail already. I’ll write to you again later. Meanwhile, if there are thoughts which this mail of mine has churned up in you… please do write back. I want to say just one last thing. You’ll be all right. You’ll come out of it. I KNOW it. Borrow my belief for a few days… until yours comes up back on its feet. How am I sure? Oh I don’t know. Evidence seems pointing in that direction pretty strongly. What evidence…? Oh… well me on your team for one… And the fact that I love you and won’t let you go under. You need more…!??!! Ha ha ha…. 

Take care, 

Chandini 

…… to be continued….. 

Tags: betrayal, trust, love

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