What does Heart and Rib mean to me?

Heart and Rib came into existence with a desire of seeking contentment, fulfill a wish to write stories I imagine characters I create with emotions I have felt and still strive for an understanding from those of you here reading these stories, that yes you have been through something similar and felt the same.

What does 'Heart and Rib' mean to me?

Amidst the trials and tribulations, there lies a primal need within us to find peace ‘Sakeenah’ and serenity. Love means many things and is a very small word for what one might feel for another person. For me, the emotions that love as a word cannot express ‘Heart and Rib’ does.

As humans we were created to start a journey of life on Earth with a purpose of holding a balance in good and evil. The stereotypical dynamic between a man and a woman has always been that a man protects his woman from any evil and a woman is a being made of delicacy and has a tendency to fall prey to such evil. However, the real essence of our co-existence is completely opposite.

In my eyes a man is the heart and a woman is the rib. She is the rib that protects this pound of flesh beating strong at every second, its pulse rising and falling on the up-hills, turns and pitfall of life. It's beat resonating  each emotion and experience it feels. It's vulnerabilities protected and covered in an enclave of shielding bars each connecting with one and another to form a cage.To exert any resistance or straighten its curve would mean to break it and to not uphold its structure would leave it to become crooked. They both reside in a form so different, still perfectly enclosed and fit just right with each other.

                 The woman a cage of ribs in which a man's heart can rest in peace. 

Behne Do Part II

The thought of coming across those liquid brown eyes a window into her soul, filled with unanswerable questions had made me immerse myself in a work load unimaginable. 

Keeping away from home and especially those dinner times has been a ritual I followed religiously ever since she had left and then stepped back on our threshold. But those late afternoon meet ups with her on every Sunday in her part of the house; a nuisance, I thought I was putting up with to oversee a project taken up in a field where KC has not ventured in before... all for the sake of Daadi Ma! Today seems like a long awaited recluse I have been craving ever since that night.

 I stood at the edge of the balcony and faced the grey clouds ahead as I mulled over the prospect of facing her today after a whole month. Do I have that much strength within me to bear the same herculean patience again and hold myself back…? Let her hand slip through mine...Watch her beautiful wet form blur away from my eyes...
 

An unknown urge rose in me to relish a burst of heavy rain under the open sky. The first drop of rain on my cheek felt like a blessing from above wishing me to walk ahead and embrace her face and her web of questions not just with words of promises! But rain her with kisses and melt her with my warm touches in the cold looming storm. To take her back in my arms…Crush her shivering wet lips with my own…Let those molten feelings that have furnace my beating heart pour out on her soul and drown her in this tide of unknown emotions within…Pushing back my wet hair away from my forehead, I looked up at the rain beating down on me and whispered with a calm determination…Let it go… Behne Do.

Short Story Behne Do Part I

Part I

I had awoken from my deep Sunday afternoon slumber with a determination of turning pages and taking this new resolve as a start to my week... Well Sunday is the first day of the week right!! I plunged myself in a warm bath washing away the heaviness of my heart that I had been carrying the past week.

Whilst I stood bend drying my damp mess of tresses, a sudden onslaught of pellets of rain on my freshly clothed back made me turn to the wide open French doors leading to the small patio. My makeshift swing of a rope hanging from the old sweet magnolia blossom tree swung back and forth. The strong earthy breeze promised a thunderous storm ahead. Clasped in a moment of lightning those very thoughts which my burning eyes and racing heart has been refusing to extinguish every night were rekindled. 

Cuddled under the shade of the age-old tree in my white malmal Kurti with my scarf splayed across the ground and onto my shoulders, I sat. I realise that this is all it took… a memory of that wet and stormy night… To break my resolve made some moments ago - To not think of him again…To not reminiscent the warmth of his chest…the firm hold of his arms around my waist, the loud beats of his heart against my ears. To finally accept that what I have in my heart will now only rise, I can hold in no more …tis will flow…this thudding heart is not mine no more.

 I lay defeated to my heart’s will just like these white magnolias fallen to the ground, acknowledging the might of the wind and accepting that this is it. I kissed the flower I held in my hand and whispered…Let it go...Behne Do.