Memoirs of Innocence

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MEMOIRS OF INNOCENCE

Leander

Names have been changed (meanings have been used), to protect the truly ‘Innocent’.

                                                      PROLOGUE

INNOCENT. My sin, my soul, my friend, my sight, my creativity, my identity, my reality, my miracle, my beloved, my day, my tears, my night, my fears, my thoughts, my dreams, my every breath, my life, my prayer, the very beat of my heart.
Innocent. Lips slightly part and then round up as if to whistle your name.
A name that makes my mind fill with nostalgia and euphoria elate my heart. All our days together seem to be part of a dream, a voyage beyond space and time, as blessed as time of epiphany, as soothing as the time of angelus.
Time and again I think about the short, meager moments we shared. Time and again I look back on those days. Time and again I leaf through these miserable memories. Not a single day passes without at least a fleeting thought about you. There is no recession from this cul-de-sac called love. I can't live on miserably like this, without getting it off my chest. I have to confess to go on living like I hath lived before. I write not to impress, but because my heart would burst if I don’t find an outlet for the thoughts that burn my soul. For waiting is painful, forgetting is painful; but not knowing what to do is the worst.

Chapter- 1

“No, I'm studying here ever since LKG”
It was a Wednesday. It must have been a Wednesday. Although my brain has retained much, but the exact day still remains blurred in my memory. I was in 9th then. I sat there in a white van, 3rd row of seats, on the right side. From the window I could almost see children running about. I rolled my eyes and they disappeared. I remembered it was day off for classes up to 8th.
Just then the driver approached, opened the door to the van and someone climbed in. I kept staring out the window, oblivious that I was no longer alone in my meditation. Suddenly a peculiar fragrance enveloped me.
‘It can't be’ I thought, turning my head to either confirm or refute my conjecture. And there she was. 
Dressed in a checked suit of white, grey and black; white lower; white socks and black shoes.
It was love at first sight, last sight, at ever and ever sight. Before I even knew I was madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love.
I was still staring at her when she said something. I didn’t really hear what she was saying, but just saw her lips slightly parting revealing a row of opals. It took some time before I realized she had said ‘Hi’ and I was seeming rude by not replying. I quickly muttered ‘Hi’. My heart was beating frantically as if trying to break through and reach out to her.
She began staring out the window and silence welled up between us. I was straining against the shackles of shyness that weighed down my tongue.
I finally broke through “you are a newcomer, right? You came in around 8th class, eh?” She replied what she hath said at the beginning of the chapter. I could hear my heartbeat. It was the first time I had ever faced jamais-vu.
She inclined her head towards the window, swinging away her hair to reveal a beautifully shaped ear with a soft rounded earlobe. It’s edge aglow with a downy fringe.
She had straight black hair, with streaks of grey in between, which somewhat added to her old soul personality. A face of exceptional innocence. A face that did not seem ever to have encountered disillusion or evil in a world of impunity, of brazen insolent vice. Her beauty stung my eyelids like smoke.
And behind all this were nerves of iron, a firm resolve as I was to discover later.
If I were to describe her, I couldn’t do so without what would seem as exaggeration.
She seemed like a musician from heaven, a maiden of the sea, a hoor, a daughter of the serpent kings.
Her face was like that of a full moon; as a season she was the spring; as a flower, jasmine; as a speaker, the nightingale; as a perfume, musk; as a beauty, Aphrodite; and as a being, love.
I was still marveling at her beauty, and contemplating about what to say, when we approached around the bend of the cul-de-sac in which her house was situated. I finally spoke after about half of half an hour, “Doesn’t Abbas live here?”
‘Shit’, I thought, this is not what I wanted to ask, I wanted to talk about her. “Ya, he does. You know him?”. “He’s my childhood buddy.” Just then I saw her house, memory fails me, but I think it was white in color. A low-lying, humble house that housed the learned authoress that was seated before me, just five seconds ago, who was now picking up her bag, now opening the door and now, she was gone.
Before she had gone and before my wits would go wool gathering, I managed to whisper “bye”. She said bye, slung the bag over her shoulder and rushed into the house.
Her mother was standing at the dooryard. She received her daughter with a smile and that was the last thing I took in before the door closed and the driver started backing the van.