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"To live in the hearts of those we love is never to die", he liked reading her epitaph every time he visited her grave. It was more of a ritual now for him, every Wednesday he went first to the local flower shop and got her favorite Tulips and then to the graveyard where she rested.
He used to walk the entire distance from home to the graveyard, but today he felt like driving, it had freshly rained and the wind was pleasantly blowing and it made him smile a bit. Perhaps for the first time in the past two years he had a genuine smile on his face, he had lost interest in laughing and had a fake grin for the people around him.
He opened the car and gently placed the tulips on the passenger's seat. He switched on the radio and it played the song he always sang for her , "Strangers in the night, exchanging glances ". It brought a tear in his eyes and a smile on his face.
He sped across the damp roads , deliberately speeding on puddles and splashing water all over. He parked the car near the graveyard's entrance and went in, making his way through the graves of other dead people. She was not a christian but she wanted a burial and he just wanted her, but god only listened to her. She got her burial sooner than anyone could imagine.
They had only met about two years ago, he was then a young boy about finish his master's and on the verge of finding a job for himself. She was the one who interviewed him for his 'dream job'.
He fell in love with her the moment he entered the small interview room, which he thought resembled a Nazi interrogation room. She asked him a series of questions and he gave a series of blistering retorts, the comedians on television would have just said "he was on a roll", but, he knew what he was on and it was her smokey black eyes.
She could not resist laughing out like baby getting his tummy rubbed with a feather. He loved to make her laugh, even when he wanted to cry.
The office romance soon transformed into serious talks of marriage, but that could not happen. Her father wanted an army boy and he had not even seen Lakshaya or Prahar to make matter worse. The saga that unfolded was one straight out a Bollywood pot-boiler. He ran away with her and her mother. Her mother was a witness in the court for their marriage, she returned home later. They both then ran away from the city with his two dogs to Mumbai.
The girl had never told anyone about the times she coughed out blood and she never intended to tell him, till one day he found her blood stained handkerchief in her handbag. He took her to the hospital, but the doctors told him, it was of no use. She was going back to god forever and had only a few months with her.
They both cried all night long and for the first time he could not make her stop crying nor could she make him crack a joke. Then on the following morning, she decided to plan her own funeral. She asked a famous Delhi designer to make her a lehenga, he made the best lehenga of his career, but,this time it was not for a wedding.
She booked the caterers for her funeral, the caterers made the best food in the world and this time they did not put baking soda in chanas, nor did they use superbhaiya oil for the cooking.
She wrote herself and obituary, like no other ever written before, this time she did not Google her story and edit it, this time it was her heart bidding adieu to the world.
She just made him promise one thing and that was to find himself someone else, he promised her one thing , that he would break that promise. She asked him to always smile and spread happiness, he smiled when she took her last breath.
She decided the spot, for where she wanted to rest for eternity, it overlooked all the other graves and was under old gulmohar tree, the graveman told her with teary eyes, you would need to get your grave cleaned, as the tree sheds a lot of leaves, she told him not to clean them up as the tree was just showering his love onto her.
He parked the car in the nearly empty lot, not many people came to the graveyard on Wednesdays, he did and he did so every Wednesday. That was the day she passed away. He walked into the graveyard and crossed all the other graves till he reached hers. He wiped the grave off the tiny leaves with his own hands and kissed the ground. A tear drop fell from his eyes onto the tiny green grass growing on her grave. He rested the Tulips on her tombstone and lit an incense stick and closed his eyes.
The groundsmen found him smiling as if he had just been given the greatest happiness of his life. He was buried next to her the following day, once the post mortem was done by the police. They found nothing, except for the fact it was body which had no soul.
The groundsmen can at times hear the two laughing, at times lying under the Gulmoher tree and times singing "Strangers in the night, exchanging glances". She planned her death, he planned their reunion.