Understanding
Understanding was never my forte. I never understood why people liked to chew gum when they were idle. I never understood how people conversed so easily with each other. I never understood what my mother meant when she said she loved me. I never understood any of this.
My disability of not-understanding was then given a name – Asperger's Syndrome. I never even understood what that meant. Till she walked in to give the meaning to my life, which I could understand.
Her name meant Love and that's all she knew how to do. Her real name was Riddhima, I never understood why it meant love. She would come to my mother's bakery every day, buying a cake for her nephew. I told her it would be harmful for him; too much sugar wasn't good for anyone.
Now that, I understood. I read in my Syndrome Book, that people like me were constantly obsessed with an activity or theme. Mine was health. I could go on and on for hours about health care and medicines. But the problem was that I never went on for long. Because I never knew how to strike a conversation; I never understood how to connect one point to another and more often than not, people hated lousy conversations and so they left. I read that in the book too. But she listened. She did. She would come to the shop daily and spend minutes staring at the cakes and macaroons spread on the shelves. Her awe-filled expression was another thing I couldn't understand, there was nothing special in caricatures and food made up of sugar, although it made me smile too – her expression. And then she would spend the time my mother took to pack her things up to listen to my thoughts on sugar-intake while my mother would stand there, rolling her eyes. In the end she would blink and smile as if to reassure me that she understood that sugar was bad for her nephew. But then the next day, she would return again with her heartening smile and shiny eyes. I wanted to ask her why she wouldn't just understand that it was wrong for her nephew; did she not get what I wanted to explain?!
But it was me, and I could never converse in a normal way, the only thing I could talk about was health and the bad effects of sugar, its history, its repercussions and she would listen. Then she would repeat the entire scene again.
And one day I understood something. I understood that the blink I received was not of understanding the ill effects of chocolate but that she understood my efforts of building up a conversation. She would stand there listening to me and not saying a word even though she could converse normally or leave at the same second, completely disinterested, but she didn't. She understood my plight, she respected my effort.
And with that understanding, I talked to her every day. About health-care. She listened, quiet and smiling. And yesterday, she kept her hand on mine, sitting on the chair near the fire place. And somehow, I understood. I understood that she would be there sitting on the counter, her hand on mine, looking at me with that same shine for her entire life.
I, Armaan Mallik, finally found someone who understood me, whom I understood. And walking with her, holding her hand going to her nephew's house to gift him some healthy carrots, I smiled. Finally understanding what Love meant. Love meant Riddhima.
Smallest thing I've every written! It's inspired from a book called "The Half-Life of Planets." A cheer for anyone who has undergone and succeeded battling with this problem.
Read and Comment!
Bisous,
Neha
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