John Keats, the famous poet, has said in one of his poems: ’Aye in the very temple of delight, veiled melancholy has her sacred shrine’. In this temple of delight, I fell in love. She was an MBA student. She used to visit my dorm often. Sometimes we met. I think it was love at first sight. I saw her first during the introduction we all had in the big hall of the Institute. She was wearing a yellow salwar raising her hands to ask a question. Since then, I had been wishing to meet her as often as I could. Let us call this woman The-light, the name I gave her because of what she was to become to me, a delight, and a light which had entered my body.

When you are in love, you feel that the person who has taken away your heart is a goddess. And you will have to make an effort equivalent to climbing Mount Everest to get to be with her. She had a boyfriend at the Institute. This made my situation complicated. Based on definitions, he was a species of a very high quality. He was an American Indian who had come to study at the Institute because his parents were alumni. He was good looking and intelligent, so I had heard from friends. This guy was also in my dorm and The-light would come see him often passing by me. I knew I had tough competition and in fact had given up until something happened. Love is a virus which as of now has no cure. It stays dormant in you and when the conditions are to its favor, it comes into full effect.

The American left the Institute after a month or so. God knows why. I guess it was not good enough for him. I, who believed in magic and serendipity, saw it as a sign that things could get better for me with The-light. The virus which had gone deep down was ready to show its face.

I saw The-light often at parties. I looked at her like Tony Montana would look at Elvira in Scarface when he sees her first. We would talk. I wanted to be closer to her. She had awakened my curiosity. She was tall, smart, and beautiful. She had an air of independence about her which had caught my fancy. She reminded me of my favorite actress Audrey Hepburn. Her throwing of hands, her spontaneous hugging, her piercing eyes that always wanted to sync with yours attracted me to her. She spoke with a synchronized movement of her eyes, her eyebrows, her hands and her body. In my dreams, she had all the charms to attract anyone’s attention but needed polishing. I wanted to bring that change in her. My wish was to be Professor Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady polishing Eliza Doolittle.

The-light wanted to take part in a business competition and she needed two partners. She asked me if I would like to take part. I jumped on to this opportunity and said yes. She included one more MBA student in the group. The competition was to suggest ideas to improve the working of aircrafts. The-light’s brother was a pilot and he gave her different ideas we could use. This time of working with The-light got me more enamored with her. She wanted to prove a point by winning this competition. We would get a sound lecture if we were late by even a minute for the meetings. In the meetings, I noticed her carefully. Her right hand would often scratch her nose a little while she would blink like a child in that little moment. She would sit on the chair a leg over other, each leg getting a superior position every few minutes. Her hands would go to the top button of her shirt and she would unconsciously play with it unbuttoning it and then buttoning it. When she would unbutton it, I could see the eyes of the other student hovering around to get a view. But The-light was oblivious to such male queries. She would keep speaking in a voice that was so female, like an opera singer. She would smell good, something the other student gave me a detailed account of when I met him in person at the cigarette shop. She hated her suggestions being opposed and would fight tooth and nail to include them in the project details. The other guy was getting pissed off with her and he stopped attending the meetings. I would look forward to the meetings and support her in everything she wanted.  

One day me and The-light were sitting on the stairs of my dorm and practicing a video we had to make for the competition. She was speaking and I was filming her. We laughed at her little mistakes and the consequent retakes we had to take. She had to describe our project in two minutes. She wanted to put in some fancy English words in the description and would falter at each take with those words. Later I heard our little act had been talked about in the dorm. We cleared the first round of the competition but lost out in the second round.

Overtime, I fell head over heels in love with her. I wanted to be Noah to her Allie in The Notebook. I could not stop thinking of her. Up until now, in my life, I had avoided the dooms of love. I had always been able to perform my duties well as compared to some of my other friends who had burned their heels in love one time or the other. This time though, it was my turn. How long is one going to stay safe? The virus of love infests us some day and all the immunity one has built up falls to pieces.

 A day before my Advanced Microeconomics exam, instead of studying for the course, I was writing a poem for her. I showed the poem to a common friend who instructed me never to send it to her. He knew I was in love with her and did his best to keep me away from her. I had lost it by then. She had come into my day dreams. And something sweet was happening in my heart. Whenever I met her, I was unable to lock eyes with her. I was afraid I will give in.  

Love is an overwhelming feeling. It gives you an aspiration to strive for, an aspiration to win over the object of your affection. This feeling gripped me. One day, I remember sitting in the room and talking to myself. I told myself to take it as a project and complete it. I wanted to win over The-light and get her into my life. I felt very confident of myself then. The only issue with me was that I was not comfortable with the fact that she kept talking about her boyfriend who was now in the US. I wanted her to tell me that she had ended it with him. My approach was like preparing for an exam and passing it with flying colors, the only kind of success I had till now. I had no idea that matters of love are not dealt in this fashion. My lack of experience in dealing with women would land me into such deep trouble that it would take me years to get out of it.

I finally sent her the poem after keeping it with me for a few months. She replied that it was good. Next day, there was a party at our dorm thrown by an exchange student. She came early. I was in the library studying. The daily activities of MBA students would distract me in my room. She messaged me and I came back. I told her I had never sent a poem like this to any girl before. I was the postman from Il Postino and she was my Beatrice Russo, didn’t tell her that though. She told me she had never received a poem like this from anyone. I didn’t know what to say further. She went to her dorm and I cursed myself in my room for not taking it further.

She knew I was in love with her. There was the poem. The common friend would tell us about each other. I showed classic symptoms. One day we were sitting in the cafeteria together discussing something. There were other students as well on the table. I felt her gaze on my face. She was looking at me with intent. She said something. I turned my head and there she was uncapping and capping a pen, her eyes fixed at me with an inquiry. I understood what she meant. I did not want to have sex without a formal relationship. I believed that love was more than sex. And the issue of her boyfriend was always there. I sort of ran out of the conversation and came back to my dorm. So many years have passed and I am still not sure if I made a mistake.

Since then, I had this deep feeling and pull towards her. It was as if she was urging me to open my heart. I now believed that she was in love with me too. I lacked courage to tell her. But one day, the feeling was so overwhelming that I asked to meet her at the coffee shop. I messaged her that I wanted to tell her something. We met. My mind stopped working and all the courage I had gathered, left me. I told her that we carry our past with us and some other abstract things that came into my mind. I could see her face contorting in disdain as I was blurting out these random sentences. I was Forest Gump trying to win his love Jennie. I praised her qualities. I told her she reminded me of my mother. She finally said I was a good man. I was not satisfied. To buy some time I asked if she would go to dinner with me. She said she had work, and left. I assumed I had expressed my love. 

At the end of the second year, after she had been placed, The-light and some of her foreign friends, who had come on exchange planned a trip to the Gujarat Gir forests and the Somnath temple. She asked me whether I would join in. I said yes. I had to submit an assignment before we could go, so I worked on it and submitted it before time. When The-light showed me the bus tickets, her name had my surname in it. Single women in our country have to resort to some peculiar measures to stay safe. The other friend of hers also had the surname of the guy who was travelling with her.

Gir forest is famous for lions. In the hotel, the day before we were set to travel in the forests, The-light came to my room to ask me if everything was OK. Actions like these excited me. When you are in love, you interpret the events in life in a manner which reinforces your feelings. Every action of The-light reinforced my belief that she too was in love with me. In the night, I went to her room to check if things were OK. She was studying. Her spectacles were on. She looked beautiful in it. The song ‘Roop tera Mastana, pyar mera deewana, bhool koi humse na ho jaye,’ was playing in my mind. I wanted to pay her the compliment but refrained.

The morning we woke up early to take the trip. We saw a lion and it was quite close to our jeep. It was a moment of a lifetime for us, watching the king of the jungle. It walked fearlessly crossing the dusty road. We clicked pictures with the lion in the background.

After the Gir forests, we went to a place I cannot recall. We had to climb a hell lot of stairs to reach the top which was a temple. The-light had read about these architectures and she would illuminate us with facts and figures about these places. The next day we went to the Somnath temple. It is a famous Shiva temple with a sandy beach close by. I remember sitting quietly with The-light and her friends on the beach when the few men caught us sitting on the land which they claimed was unauthorized. We paid a bribe to get out of this problem. In the temple, she prayed to idol of God Shiva. I wondered what she was asking God to give her. I was sure it was nothing to do with me.

  As the year was ending, I developed a certain fear of The-light. Whenever I would think of her, I felt overcrowded with a range of emotions. I was afraid of meeting her somewhere on the campus. For some reason my body started tightening too. On the one hand, I wanted to chat with her, on the other, I wished to stay away from her. She was going to leave in a few days and I could not bear the burden of not seeing her.

The day The-light was to get her degree in convocation; I went to the ceremony to see her hold the degree. I reached just on time. She looked all tall and beautiful. I saw a woman erupt in joy and deduced that this was her family who had come to see her convocation. In the evening, I was passing by the mess when I saw her standing with her degree with a few of the other students. I was so afraid I put my head down and did not even say hello to her. I walked with a brisk pace to my dorm room. 

When the MBA’s left the campus, for me the campus turned from a lush green rainy field to a rainless drought induced desert. I felt I lost a part of me, that the fun of life had seceded from me. The-light had left too. The song ‘yeh dooriyan, in raahon ki dooriyan, nigahon ki dooriyan, hum rahon ki dooriyan, fanah ho sabhi dooriyan,’ was continuously playing in loop in my mind. There was no more meeting her or talking to her. When these guys were there on campus, something was always happening. There was life. When they left, the life had been sucked out. The common friend used to call me every weekend. He said he loved to talk to me. I had become his dumping ground. He would dump his emotions and everyday experiences with me. As it is I spoke less and was a very good listener.

Heat had come back to the city. The PhD students had to prepare for the comprehensive exam. One had to pass this exam to start research. In my area we had to pass three subjects: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Econometrics. I started preparing for these exams. I was comfortable in Microeconomics and Econometrics. In Macroeconomics, the faculty had taught a good deal of theory and models in a short period of time and I had to revise them. 

Something unusual started happening with me in those times. While I was reading for Macroeconomics, I could see The-light inside me. Yes, I could see her. Even though my heart was with her, my mind too had taken that path. The Office of Students affairs asked us to change rooms. I was so anxious about my exams that I did not wish to spare time for changing rooms. So, I saw The-light going to the office of student affairs and fighting with the head of the office. I saw her doing that. This prompted me to write an angry mail to the office with a cc to the chairperson who allowed me to stay where I was.

It was the fear and the anxiety which got the better of me.  The-light had overtaken me. It was very difficult for me to study. She was in my thoughts while I was walking, eating, sitting or watching movies. Whatever I did I could see her. The effect was so pronounced that she was always in my dreams as well. She came to me as a wonderful feeling. There was whiteness around her, an angelic feeling. Half of my body and mind would be engaged with her all the time while the other half, which was black, would sit and observe with anxiety at the turn my life had taken. My heart used to pace fast, my hands would tremble often, and my legs were always shaking. My body, split into black and white, always occupied me. I started reading very fast. I knew I only had to read for Macroeconomics. But I raced through the models like I was watching a fast-moving car race. I was Amelie having sex. The concepts didn’t register to me.

The exams came. In Microeconomics, the question was a case. It was something which had been already discussed in class. There were four students in our area. We collected the question paper from the office and sat together to discuss the answers. Nothing was stopping us from doing that even though it was unethical. I felt it but did not have the courage to tell them so. I was complicit in this wrongdoing. In econometrics too we had to work on the problems on the excel sheet. The faculty had mailed us the questions in the morning. The solutions were to be submitted till the afternoon. We worked alone even though one of my colleagues came into my room to get the answers. He was finding it difficult.

In Macroeconomics, we had a sit in exam. Everybody felt this was the tough one. The questions were supposed to come from the problem set of the course book. The solutions were available and we decided to take the solutions to the exam. There were three problems straight from the book. I could not convince myself to look at the solutions. I was not the kind of person who had cheated in my life. It was never needed. I did not look at the solutions and wrote my own answers. The others did consult the solutions.

When the results came, I was fine in Microeconomics and Econometrics. But was the only one to fail in Macroeconomics. The faculty took a separate exam for me. The questions were simpler. I had come up with fever and gave the exam with heated temperatures in my body. The professor passed me in the exam with a comment that I had barely managed to do so.

 After passing, I spent some of my time in the library and some in the room. I could not stop thinking about The-light. I felt as if sweet honey was being secreted in my heart whenever I would think of her. I would stare at the Gtalk friend list to check if she was online. Sometimes when I would see her online, I did not have to courage to ping her and talk. Her thoughts would fill me with certain kind of white light. Light and shiny substances would fill my chest. I had never had these feelings before. I had a deep urge to make love to her. She would come into my mind in her full form. I don’t know how normal people think of other people. But when I thought of her or more correctly saw her, she was in her fully fleshed form. If she would move, I would feel exactly the same way as I would feel if I saw her moving in real life. I could do whatever I wanted with her. She would talk to me and behave as if she was my lover. I spent days and nights in her thought. It was not clear to me, while being immersed in making love to her, that she was me. That I was playing her part too. I believed that the real woman was there in me. If an onlooker had seen me, it would look like a terrible mono acting I was performing.

One day when I had made love to her, I felt that she was sitting in me. I was no more a man. I had become a woman who was her. I was in a complicated version of Bergman’s Persona. I felt that her head was my head, that her body was my body, that I had developed breasts. She looked worried. I deduced that making love to me made her worried. That she was doing something antisocial. Anxiety filled me in like rainwater fills a reservoir, slowly and steadily.

One day I pinged her when I saw her online. She told me she was going to visit campus the next day. I was happy to hear that. In the evening, lost in her thought, I sent her a couplet in Hindi as a message on phone. I was calling her my The-light. She did not reply back. I got angry at my action and threw away all the books on the table on to the floor. I was cursing myself for doing this. Next day, I was so anxious, I could not do anything. Would she meet me? I kept sitting on the chair with the mobile phone in my hand the whole time. I finally sent a message to her in the evening but by then she had stopped replying to me. After a few days, I called her. She had blocked my number.