Sufia is a fake
My another tryst with imagination.
Characters depicted resemble real people, living.
Characters depicted resemble real people, living.
Amer logs off from Sufia’s account; it has now become tough to fend off her lovers. For Sufia is a girl next door, charming, sharp and emotional in every girl’s capacity. Half the people she has met pass her off as an aspiring model but, she has always been with the arts.
Music and architecture have been her passion for years. She could have easily become an engineer but, she took up creative direction in TV shows for a free lance job. One could woo her with poetry and scented candles; she would flatter you with her sensible humor.
It’s foolish not to fall in love with her.
Repetitive, failed relations with men, more inclined towards the physical contours of a relationship have only made her slumber into the dark corners of her heart searching for something discreet. It’s her bonding with Aseem that has made her experience relationships with no names.
Aseem is from a well to do family in Saket, settled out of Delhi. Being few years younger to Sufia has not deterred them from taking things forward in their so called friendship. He has always been a point of envy in Sufia’s relationship with other men she was yet to face.
Sufia’s idea of meeting exciting people is through social websites as they have enough armor to protect her from unwanted male admiration. Over the past one year she had randomly befriended over 500 men and women she thought would turn out interesting in their own possible way.
She had actually fallen in love with one Mr. Ahmed, painter by profession and a visionary of several art forms. It had become staple for them to meet over the internet and share their daily woes. It was with him that she ever disclosed her part of Aseem. Their chats would see no end on Ghalibs, Popes and would lengthen on Van Goughs and others. Colorful Ahmed, recently married had a great exploration capacity, both believed that they had explored each other to the core but, the quest was never ending. Ahmed on serious nights would at times try introducing a barter relationship which Sufia would pass off humorously. But somewhere down the line she needed someone like Ahmed, emotionally. At times Ahmed would become difficult and try to force a decision out of Sufia.
At times Amer would just sign off.
Amer is a failed poet and a writer. His work of imagination created flutter in the market only in bursts until people started disowning the dullness in his characters. Once a literary genius his work now collected dust in bookshelves across the city, the social media had taken over the real paperbacks.
Sufia is an imagination.
Amer had cultivated Sufia over a year ago while working on a character, lively and emotional. He had taken it too seriously while making her a near perfect online profile. She was born in New Delhi and went to premier schools and colleges finally settling down to a well chosen career. At first he projected herself novice to the social websites and randomly added people who would add her based on the glamorous pictures of her he had made public. For pictures he had relied on Hannah an unknown aspiring Pakistani model who had pictures from her normal and glamorous days.
Like Ahmed there were several men who loved her immensely and little girls who modeled on her. Out of desperation to sort out emotions that were blowing out proportions, Amer decided to reveal all and change her display name to “Sufia is fake, I’m sorry”.
Weeks and lots of explanations after, all Sufia was left with were a few online Romeos, no real men and women who cared. People who had disowned her laughed at their fates and blocked her forever. Amer was never at fault, it’s his own character that had attracted love. Probably packaged in a pink wrapper with a feminine ribbon is what people could see of him now.
But, Sufia was in love and Ahmed would never respond now.
It was like the whole world coming to an end one fine morning when you wake up from a dream that was all rosy. What better now but, to embrace the reality? What about Aseem? Ahmed? And those little girls? Should they be sent back to living in a world so cold, wasted away? But, there isn’t any settling point as Sufia had no choice.
Love for another man, admiration for an imaginary friend, responsibility towards young girls were all at a risk of being termed insane and pervert.
Amer was in love, Sufia was attractive. He wished to be born a Sufia one day in a good life, probably then he could have everything. But he knew probably there won’t be another one like her. It is now he hated, a failed life and no real companions.
That night Amer collapsed in his dreams, never to get up again. Drug abuse was never a solution to kill something crawling beneath your skin.
