Excerpts From My Diary #11 - I Cannot Cry!

He sat on the edge of the terrace. The clock had just struck midnight. Winter rains had engulfed Delhi completely. It was pouring from above but he sat there without even noticing it. Cigarettes and Alcohol were nowhere around for a reason. A relative of his had passed away a day before.

I went and sat beside him. He took notice and stood up.

“Lets go inside. The rains might make you sick” He said with a straight face. No sign of any expression. But I smiled. He had started caring.

“Are you okay?” I asked

“Yep!” Another short and curt reply.

We went inside and sat on the chairs. Complete silence. The only thing one could hear was the sound of the raindrops.

He looked expressionless. Lost. Even though I had seen this expression previously, there was something different this day.

I bent forward and held his hand. I looked straight into his eyes and said, “You can cry if you want to. It will make you feel better.”

A sad smile appeared on his face. He heaved a sigh, looked back straight into my eyes and spoke in his baritone voice.

“You know, sometimes a person reaches a place in life wherein he cannot cry. No matter how hard he tries, no matter how much his heart yearns for it, no matter how much his emotions crave for it. He just cannot. He cannot release these emotions in the form of those water droplets. And that’s not because he doesn’t want to. It’s because his emotions have been trapped for so long that escape is not an option now.

I am one of those. Death still depresses me and I feel really sad but then I cannot be free by letting it out. I store them in the secret room of my heart.”

His eyes completely showed what his heart felt. I had never seen the genuine emotions pouring through someones eyes like that.

He continued, “ And this is the only thing I am scared of. To live my remaining life all through the way I have been living right now.”

I went and hugged him tight. Sadly, he didn’t hug back. He just told me that he needed some time and went downstairs.

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