A Beautiful Paradox or Just a Hiccup?

This is the third installment of Siddhant & Ishika's story. Click on these links to read the previous parts: Part 2 & Part 1. Just to summarize, boy meets girl, likes her but his feelings aren't reciprocated. Still, they grow closer and share a strange intimacy they develop over the course of days. If you're done reading the earlier parts, let me tell you what happened next.

So Siddhant's plan was pretty simple. Be consistent, be insistent and be crazily persistent, and just hope that his feelings would seep into Ishika's heart. There was just one problem with that plan. It didn't factor in Ishika's decision never to fall in love again. There's a background story to Ishika's drastic decision but she's pretty tight lipped about it, so let's respect her privacy and move on to where Siddhant's at. He was being an absolute darling to Ishika, but his charms fell flat against her unwavering resolve not to fall in love.

Siddhant and Ishika were spending more and more time communicating with each other. Texts, calls, video calls and voice notes. She recognized how intense Siddhant was becoming and while it was surprising to see someone feel such real emotions within such a short span, it was scary for her, because she knew she wouldn't be able to give him the affection he desired. It was a paradox. She was in awe of how genuine this guy and his emotions seemed, she liked talking to him and was starting to care for him, enough to start investing her attention on him. But she still couldn't be in love with him, and she knew it wouldn't be fair towards him if she did any less.

Meanwhile, Siddhant was trying to come to terms with how he was feeling. He was trying to make sense of how suddenly these feelings had taken over him. It felt like he'd never experienced anything like it before. He wanted to call it "love" but the word had been so overused in pop culture and stigmatized that he was scared that she'd laugh at him if he told her he was falling in love with her. And every moment he spent keeping that revelation a secret, made his head hurt. So finally, on the twelfth day of knowing her, Siddhant confessed to Ishita that he had fallen for her.

She reacted in a weird manner. She turned her face away from him, with an expression that was a cross between smiling and sobbing. And then she told him that she wasn't prepared for that. And his heart fell. He had never been this earnest in his thirty odd years of life, and not getting reciprocation felt really bad. But he couldn't be caught in a vulnerable moment, so he quickly wiped off that one tear from his eye and moved on to the next joke, attempting to make Ishika smile. Because when she smiled, Siddhant's world seemed right, the colours around him seemed brighter and it gave him the strength to live through another day of not having Ishika's love.

Ishika on the other hand, was facing a paradox of her own making. Having sworn off relationships only a few months ago, here she was, face to face with what felt like a guy from a fairy tale. Siddhant was everything a girl could ask for, genuine, respectful, caring and considerate. The more she got to know him, the more amazing he seemed. And that was making her suspicious. Her distrust for men, in general, was making her doubt the sustainability of whatever Siddhant "thought" he felt for her. She was sure he'd eventually move on, when she'd not respond to his approaches. 

Isn't it strange when you make plans and things just turn those plans upside down? Both of their plans were being turned on their heads simultaneously, and all Ishika and Siddhant could do was to look at it in wonder. His plans of bringing down her walls, were so far unsuccessful. And her plans of not being affected by him were also beginning to fail. She realized, rather reluctantly, that she had started caring for him. The more she cared for him, the more she wished for him to let go of his pursuit of her. Siddhant was going crazy, now that Ishika knew how he felt for her. His need for her attention had grown ten folds in the last couple of days, but he couldn't say it without sounding too desperate.

Ishika, without even realizing it, had been texting Siddhant more and more, even though they still hadn't been able to meet for a second time. And Siddhant was feeling very positive about it. Ishika kept trying to convince him that she cared for him as a friend. She didn't want him to be so hopeful. She tried being jokingly mean, by undermining all of his approaches, but he would bounce back from then quickly. To him, her reproach felt just like a little hiccup in the bigger scheme of things. Every day, he could sense Ishika getting closer to him and he knew in his heart, that she'd eventually see him the way he saw her.

It was a paradox, or maybe it was just a hiccup. Either ways, neither of them agreed with the other, or reached an impasse. But they respected each other and kept strong at their resolves. And on the other hand, both of them at times, found themselves wishing they'd lose. Because Siddhant knew he had a world of pain waiting for him ahead, if Ishika failed to love him back. And Ishika sometimes wished she'd met Siddhant earlier, so that she could feel for him differently.

While the whole situation was chaotic, what the two crazies shared with each other was becoming more and more real and beautiful. Irrespective of the labels that each of them wanted to slap on the relationship they were developing, it was growing strong and intimate with each passing day. Their constant tussle distracted them from the fact that, essentially, what they felt for each other, was mutual. You could call it love, or you could call it friendship, either ways you'd be wrong as well as right. They're just too close to the picture to see its real implication. I feel that by the time they figure it out, they'd be inseparable.