OMINOUS E-mail

OMINOUS E-mail

  By Dr Tilak S Fernando

It took only a few moments for Sena to put the phone down on Neelanthi ending a long argument. They were on the phone for more than forty-five minutes, trying to justify each other about their feelings on an e-mail Nilanthi had received through Sena’s mailbox, as she did not have the email facility while she was on holiday in London. Sena sat back on his comfortable leather armchair in his luxury flat in London, and went into deep thought to try and understand the meaning of this unusual communication.

Sena considered himself as one of the unfortunate souls born to this world without his consent. The constant change of countenance on his face, from artificial smiles to melancholic expression, was evidence that Sena was an extremely sad man with a superficial exterior.  Although Sena had been brought up in a most comfortable family environment in Sri Lanka, life had not been so kind to him in London, especially with his love life.

A man who once had everything from a luxury life and all the comforts, was now confined only to a lonely luxury flat in Mayfair, in the heart of London. Nilanthi came to Sena’s life in a most unexpected manner on a public road in London, while he was on a rebound from a broken love affair, which had lasted only a couple of years.

Sena had always been a victim in his self-created love arena. The gentle, sincere and romantic attitude Sena adopted towards women had always been run over by every female, who came into his life so far, only to throw him more and more deep into a pit of anguish, he thought.

When Sena met Nilanthi in London, it was just a casual encounter. Gradually from a platonic social intercourse, they were drawn towards each other unintentionally. Naturally the chemistry seemed to have worked gradually, drawing them closer and closer to each other every day, both in mind and spirit.

Soon, Sena’s dull and lonely life began to fill with romantic air, and Nilanthi had now become almost part of his furniture in his Park Lane sitting room.  They joked, laughed and chatted and chatted for long hours on various topics from philosophy, family matters to general subjects.

Sena seemingly began to confide in Nilanthi every detail of his life story; from the time he was a kid in Sri Lanka.  Nilanthi similarly reciprocated her past, including the special friend whose e-mail seemed to have disturbed Sena suddenly.

“Today an American gentleman walked up to me in Oxford Street, with full of compliments, and asked me whether he could just walk with me”. She once told her experience to Sena, but it did not seem to worry Sena in the least, or to be affected by it. But what made Sena go raving mad, after glancing through a simple e-mail Nilanthi had received from the ‘special friend’ made him to go berserk this time?

It is true that Neelanthi had been discussing his old friend Saman with Sena from the time they became attracted and close to each other. She told Sena how Saman was an unfortunate man, being married with kids, who was in dire straits, and having been ostracized from his own family after his marriage to his girl friend, without the approval or the family blessing.  He thought no one cared or sympathized with his plight nor did anyone come forward to help him. She told Sena how particularly a shy in character her friend was, and his shyness was interpreted by many as being arrogant with a bloated ego! .   She always defended Saman saying “ no one could understand Saman, except me.  I have always extended a helping hand with a brotherly love.”

During her platonic friendship with Saman, she naturally had acted as a ‘blotting paper’ to absorb all the sad stories Saman poured out to her, including his wife and the children. Sure, Saman may have had a subtle liking or an approach towards Nilanthi, which he could not control, but some of his pseudo-romantic overtures pouring on her made Nilanthi to become weak and get somewhat attracted to him physically and unconsciously.
Sena, at times, thought whether Nilanthi too suffered from a kind of a vacuum in her personal life. Whatever the case may have been, it was evident that Saman had been clever enough to mesmerize Nilanthi to such an extent that she was going overboard with sympathy blind-folded. Many a time she had gone to the extent of bailing out Saman’s wife’s extravaganza by redeeming her pawned gold bangles from a bank, which they had mortgaged during a financial crisis.

Nilanthi went further towards helping Saman and his wife, in buying presents to their children.  At times, such emerging thoughts amazed Sena, but he did not know that Nilanthi only cared for the well-being of the young children, who would otherwise had to suffer. Nilanthi had convinced that Saman being a married man with a family, posed no danger to her personally. She emphatically swore and always maintained that her motives were purely platonic and humanitarian. Had Saman then misunderstood her kindness?  Or was he being a tactful smooth performer using emotional blackmail on Nilanthi to his own gain? Sena began to think.

‘ How can such a strange friendship develop and sustain’? Sena questioned Nilanthi once. Her explanation was that during their student days Saman had always been very fond of her, but she could not possibly become serious with him except developing a brotherly love and friendship. That has been carried forward. This very fact made her to treat Saman in the same fashion.

“It’s a long-term friendship from childhood”. Obviously something in Saman had managed to attract Nilanthi, but not to the extent that she could fall in love with him or to marry and devote her entire life as his wife. That very fact had made Saman to get trapped into a kickback marriage, she explained to Sena.

Saman had been communicating with Nilanthi progressively via email. When Nilanthi came to London on holiday she did not have an e-mail account, so, innocently she had requested Saman to write to Sena’s email address clearly marked ‘ FAO Nilanthi on the subject.. Once or twice, several phrases and the undertones in Saman’s e-mails seemed to have upset Sena, while he opened the mail unintentionally, but after lengthy discussions and explanations Sena and Nilanthi managed to patch-up things.

Saman, though married with young children, had a way of addressing Nilanthi, a style that no other married man would dare with another woman! ‘May be still he had feelings about her’, Sena thought. Saman’s amorous jargon at times began to worry Sena at first, and several intimate phrases had an underling effort on the part of Saman to emotionally blackmail Nilanthi to seek and develop her sympathy, in many a fold, with the sole purpose of using her kindness for his financial gains. When Sena saw this, in between the lines, he began to loathe him.

Sena tried on several occasions to convince Nilanthi that it is not a genuine friendship as far as Saman’s friendship is concerned, and explicitly told her about his feelings on this ‘unusual friendship’. But the ‘platonic bond she had managed to develop, especially when others around her tried to put some sense into her stubborn mind, only had a negative effect that made her drive emotionally more and more towards Saman by saying, ‘It’s only a true friendship; I do care for him and his plight, that’s all, which Saman in return tactfully used to his advantage.

Sena worried a lot and came to the conclusion that it had gone too far and beyond repair! But could he just keep mum about it?  Sena loved Nilanthi so passionately, and it was not possible for him to look away from the situation.

The tiff over Saman’s last e-mail was quite different.  It had hurt Sena so much that he was convinced that Saman was playing some kind of monkey pranks and harbouring certain designs on her character. This very fact made Sena depressed.

It was a moment when Sena was thrown into the dumps once again, after a few months of momentary happiness with Nilanthi.  Seated in his leather couch, Sena could not think straight, but only could recapture the first incident how he met Nilanthi in London, wearing a black Dorothy Perkin blouse and a long shaped red skirt. Her lightly painted lips and her hair cascading up to her waistline.  Her voice was gentle like ringing bells, and her smile was mesmerizing. It was love at first sight for Sena.

Such memories were sufficient for him to jump even over the London Westminster Bridge into the River Thames.  With tears pouring down over his masculine cheeks, he realized that it was his final moment of defeat in life, as Nilanthi did not leave any room to discuss or accept what Sena said about Saman. In a rather depressive mood Sena thought the moment of happiness he sought out of Nilanthi would never realize.  He realized that his thinking, that at long last, he found the ideal woman in his life who would love him deeply and care for him truly seem to prove himself wrong.

Sena was once again thrown into the dumps in his depressive thoughts and considered himself to be a defeatist for a moment. “To have fallen into the same trap as before was the most foolish thing that I ever did” he thought. But he could not help it. It was his nature to love. He was a man who needed love and caring constantly, but no woman had been able to give that to him continuously for too long. He has failed for the last time too, he thought. With benumbed feelings of pain he walked towards the garden. Walking amidst the rose bushes he could visualize one thing –The Rose was still prettier besides many thorns around its stem!

When Sena could not compose himself, he started walking along the main street and his first glimpse of  a ‘down and out’ drunkard made him think whether he too was one of the victims of women, like himself! While strolling along the London streets, Sena tried to rationalize his feelings. He thought Nilanthi would never hurt him to that extent. Her sharp words, “You can’t tell me with whom I should speak or not” seemed to have churned Sena upside down!  But one thing was certain, that the last e-mail and her closed-shop attitude about Saman’s behaviour had certainly managed to drive a sharp and a poisonous nail deep down through Sena’s sensitive heart.

‘Is it part of the re-shaping characteristic of theMillennium Woman’?  Sena paused for a few seconds. Looking back again he would not like to blame her, for she had always confided everything to Sena. How many times had she told Sena that Saman was not a threat to Sena’s life and the romantic jargon Saman always used in his emails to her was his normal style of flattery!

“Don’t worry Sena, these don’t bother me at all, and I just read them and throw them away. He is not a threat to you. You believe in me, don’t you”?  When such words began to reverberate in his eardrums, how could he blame her?  ‘Have I been over-sensitive and jumped the gun?’ Sena wondered for a moment.

It happened to be a somewhat cold day in London. The chilly wind was sufficient to make one freeze as it penetrated through the warm clothing into one’s bone marrow. Will that make any difference to Sena’s young heart that has become an inferno? When the pain became unbearable, and he could not continue with his walk, Sena went home, stood in front of the picture of Jesus Christ in his room, closed his eyes, and made one single prayer.

“ Oh Lord! Please, don’t make Nilanthi’s life any more miserable than what is now.”  Soon, Sena could visualize the good times he spent with her like in a moving film, but he soon realized that by contemplating on past memories, he will only torment his mind, body and soul further.

“Nilanthi shall we go for a dance”?  Sena thought of the days how he invited her to go for a dance, and how willingly and enthusiastically she accepted his invitation. The dance hall was full of participants, and from time to time, the dim lights in the ballroom turned into pitched darkness taking the young couples into their own world!   Oh.!  That certainly was heaven!  That’s life surely!!!  Sena tried to reminisce. Soon he withdrew into his shell once again and tried to compare the life he had with Nilanthi up to the moment this ominous email arrived.

Sena drove up to Central London. Standing at the riverbank of Thames, he could see the colour of water all gone muddy and clusters of rubbish parting, reuniting, and parting on its way along the current on the water. He would then try to compare his thoughts and feelings he generated towards Nilanthi to that of those clusters of dirt in muddy water in the River Thames with his own life’s experiences. That seems to be how the nature works surely, he thought.

“I have told you Sena not to have such ideas. I will love you and you will always be in my heart and soul, but I am not the marrying type, can you get that into your thick head”?  Sena could suddenly remember one of Nilanthi’s statements reverberating in his ears.  Such thought waves naturally were hallmarks for his continuing heart pains and burns. ‘ Nilanthi may have been treating me also  like  Saman, with the same  kind of brotherly love, and friendship, I am the fool, real fool, how can I blame her”, Sena tried to justify his feelings.

This was all because he was going to do something that he was not accustomed to, thought Sena.  But it all fell into place quite by accident, in a strange sort of way. Sena could not give an explanation for his actions or reactions, may be he was getting too fond of her, and becoming too possessive of Nilanthi without his knowledge!  May be it was the first time Sena detected genuine love and caring of a woman, and the word love meant so much for Sena for the first time.

Nilanthi on her part was sincere. She cared for Sena, worried about him all the time. She would telephone more than ten times a day to Sena just to find out how he was feeling as she had known how hurtful Sena had been especially, after his broken affair with Sonali.

Nilanthi had had promised under oath not to leave him mentally and in spirit, whatever may happen between them, and she was sure to maintain that, yet how would Sena react?  Will he be able to cope up with further e-mails of Saman in the future? Will such a friendship be a real threat to their bond, which they thought was made out of concrete?

Finally Sena did a thorough analysis of Saman’s actions, reactions and attitudes, according to the description Nilanthi told him, and found ample instances and incidents to pinpoint to Nilanthi in a rational manner how Saman had not been sincere, and to clearly show how Saman was making a real use of her kindness and generosity whilst living a double life to fill his mental ego and towards his financial advantage, on the pretext of loving and caring craftily confined only to words, but certainly with no deeds,  and she was going after a meaningless mirage.

She was finally able to think straight and realize to what extent she had been used by Saman, even when she went out of her way to dig him out of deep financial holes, by forgoing her own personal valuables. That finally helped her to sever her friendship with Saman forever, without any sympathy or forgiveness.

It became a moment that helped her to open her eyes wide and look at reality, for which she was so grateful to Sena. It made her more and more close to him.

Sena on his part was happy that at long last he was able to put some sense into Nilanthi. Sena wanted Nilanthi to be unhappy and not go through mental torture.  Demonstration of Sena’s true love to Nilanthi by word, deed and action, made her to reciprocate the same love and caring for Sena in a much more and intensive manner.

Sena is happy that at long last, he found the right partner in life, after all the mishaps in the past.  Nilanthi is reborn and has become part in Sena’s life.

‘Saman and his emails have become only feint memories in a distant past for both of them.  In a world of their own, Sena and Nilanthi enjoy true love and counting the days when they can legally be together to share all the happiness in the world.  But the only question mark that hangs in Sena’s mind is whether, through his past experiences with the opposite sex, will providence start playing tricks again in the future!

tilakfernando@gmail.com

London - 2013-  Sri Express.