Rosaline – that is my name. I want to share my story to this world which has loved and worshipped Romeo and his Juliet for years. This is a world which accepts and favors true love. And with that strong belief I am here in front of everyone to soliloquize my life.
What is love? Who defined love to this world?
Shah Jahan & Mumtaz, Laila & Majnu, Romeo & Juliet? When I think
about juxtapose it holds, I smirk and then smile. This world has secrets,
opinions, thoughts and that is because of the sculptor who beautifully brings
out his view of the object with his hands. He includes intricacies to it which
melt and fade away to the common man’s eyes. This sculpture is explained by
experts and the extracts are read and re written by critic after critic and
finally the little hints the sculptor left behind are totally lost.
You may be wondering why I am telling you all
this. It is because I am the little intricate fold which Shakespeare left behind
for the world to understand. I am the embodiment of love which he wanted every
one of you to write down in your hearts. But I am lost just like many other
works which should not have been.
I belong to the Capulet’s family. Romeo’s lineage
is our Arch enemy. I love my family and I live by principles. To me promises are
meant to be followed and there are no rules or means to circumvent it. To simply
put in the language of today’s world, I am an old school and also a nerd. And
Romeo was just my opposite.
There was nothing romantic in the way I first
met him. I don’t want to go into the details but I met him and he was there. The
second I looked into his eyes, my age and life in this world felt wasted. I knew
who he was but when the heart starts its game, the brain stops functioning. I
just looked, actually stared at him with my big beautiful eyes and then walked
away. I knew he liked me. His gestures, the confusion and rush of emotions in
his face, his eyes dancing magically all over me – I am not sure I can explain
how but we were in love and I saw it in his eyes. I am a girl we girls always
know it.
We met a number of times, by chance of luck or by
chance of humans. And I never spoke – I just couldn’t. He made me hypnotized. I
thought he knew but that was my mistake. Days flew by and he asked me one day.
True to his house’s norms which did not believe in marriages and a couple had to
consummate to prove their bond to the world. I was not ok with it. I wanted a
fairy tale marriage and I had sworn to maintain my chaste till that day to my
forefathers. Romeo couldn’t understand me. To him I was just a weak embodiment
of rose with apparent perfection in looks. He did not understand that to reach
the rose one had to face the thorns and it is not Rose’s mistake but it is how
it is made.
Romeo did not stop pursuing me but was upset and
dead inside. “She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow / Do I live dead that
live to tell it now.”- He said his friends. And his friends who wanted him to
move away from my thoughts forced him to go to parties where there could be many
other beautiful angels who may make him forget me. In my mind I knew Romeo, I
knew he would wait and understand and accept just me. I trusted him and I was
right till the second he met Juliet.
The rest of the story is something which you all
know. They killed each other with their so called love. Critics called Romeo’s
love for me as childish and for Juliet as matured. They were according to the
world, meant to be together forever. And they are in each human’s heart today.
But I sacrificed my life too not physically but emotionally.
I turned 90 and died alone in my chamber with
Romeo in my heart and my promises kept till my last breath. People around me
thought I was silent and mad to lead such a life. They couldn’t understand. I
said nobody because nobody asked because nobody knew this – Even when Romeo was
with Juliet, even when he killed himself there was a rose near him, there was
me. When Juliet said Romeo that in every woman there is a Rose, I realized her
intelligence. She knew she could never take my place in his heart and so she had
offered herself to him as my replacement saying I was in her too.
The world may call them star crossed lovers and
me as a cruel soul. But true love does not make judgments. My heart knows the
truth because I have seen it in his eyes. So I sit silently reading every
version of the tale and smiling at the world on their naive ignorant behaviors
and inferences. Just today, just for a second I wanted to know how it feels to
live a life when the world knows the truth. And so I write this, I write this to
all of you – I am Rosaline and this is my story.
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