Why?

One night in March 2005 the heavens and the club hoppers of Colombo found a girl and a boy lying close on the bonnet of a small Toyota in front of a popular night club, with their arms wrapped around each other laughing and smiling and talking in to the wee hours of the morning.

Though it might have seemed romantic and wishfully lovely, little did anyone know that the boy was telling the girl he couldn’t be with her.

There, on that bonnet that night, as he pointed out the belt of Orion to her – Maybe to impress, we’ll never know, and as she silently accepted pretending to be impressed that he was pointing to the dagger and not the belt, she snuggled close to him and laid her head on her best friend’s shoulder. The guy she had loved for so long without even knowing it. She listened while he gently told her how he just had too much to work on and therefore couldn’t give her a commitment. She smiled when he said “you are perfect. You deserve a lot. And I can’t give that to you right now. I won’t ask you to wait either, because I don’t know how long it will take”

Half crying, half angry, and consumed by the love she had for him, she just wrapped her arms around this man she had known for years. A boy she watched grow. A friend who she fell in love with.

Now two years later, she is saying good bye to him. She is half angry, half crying and still consumed by the love for him. She knows how much she will miss knowing he was around. But how can she hold some one else’s husband in her arms and cry?

Some loves don’t change. They just grow and mature and settle deep in our hearts. That kind of love can surpass any hard moment. That is the love that comes with a lot of sharing and respect. A pure love that has never taken advantage of its power or hold on some one else.

The woman sits today and wonders about how she should react. Had she managed to get the tears out of the way over the past few nights?

She sits surprised in her world to find out that through the years and changes her feelings had remained constant. She is surprised that the love a girl found ten years ago is still very much strong in a woman who is about to say good bye to her best friend.

She plasters a smile on her face as she leaves to face her parallel existence. One last time before she lets him go for ever, leave her and move far away, she wonders how amazingly safe she felt in his arms one night that long time ago.