Encoded Love

A renowned mathematician of his time, he was known for his ability to play with numbers. He had no habit of playing cards or watching television. In his leisure time, he kept on multiplying long digit numbers and he kept on doing it every day. He had no aim to set any record to calculate at the least time but he kept on calculating. He did so because that was his fun. Apart from the people in his town he was known by academicians and scholars from all over the country. He had a welcoming attitude for everyone and was delighted whenever guests turned up at his place; but he didn’t appreciate whenever people used to boast about his name and fame. He never spoke much other than his subject. He always enjoyed teaching young minds. He never scolded anybody because of their inability to take up lessons fast. Instead he had the patience to teach a thing numerous times until the other person had known about it. He didn’t charge anything for his lessons to the young school going kids. Instead he had chocolates for them every day during the class. He believed in enjoying the process of learning. He also loved to teach because it was not many years since he had left his school life. He was a scholar by brain, a young lad by age and a child by his heart.

Time passed on. His popularity should have increased but it didn’t. Instead people seemed to avoid him. They thought that perhaps he had turned lunatic. He didn’t harm anyone; but he spoke less now. Instead he kept on staring at the walls, once which were painted with cozy colours but now covered with strange arrangement of similar numbers. He had the numbers 5.22.15.12.25.13.5.5.13.9.18. written everywhere. The few visitors often tried to ask him what did it mean but they were always dissatisfied. Everyone thought perhaps the man who had the habit of playing with numbers got lost into a strange pattern of few of them and he shall be entangled with that pattern forever. Nobody thought that he was alright. Nobody tried to decode the pattern. Perhaps the world had already lost a genius.

One fine day he woke up and found a letter at his doorstep, which was delivered by the old postman of the town and who was his good friend until everyone coined him to be a lunatic. He opened the letter and jumped to excitement. He had no one around with whom he could share. He rushed to sweet shop and bought a lot of sweets. He rushed to the few neighbours and asked every one of their family to take a piece. Instantly they got away with the fact that they had coined the same man as lunatic and they broke into the piece of sweet, exhibiting a bogus smile so that they were conceived as to be gentle by others. Nobody wanted to know why the young man was so happy and he didn’t bother. He was busy distributing sweets. A high school student of his, who was in college by then and who was strictly barred by his parents to visit him kept watching. He saw the letter in his hands and found a name in it. He rushed to the mathematician’s place and looked at the numbers. He found something interesting in the numbers. He realized he has just decoded something. He smiled for a while and took a piece of chalk and placed letters for every number. He found something as EVOLYMEEMIR. He rearranged the words by reversing the order of digits. He found something very meaningful, RIMEE MY LOVE. He wasn’t sure if he had decoded the correct way but he could make sense out of something that everybody didn’t even care to look at. Just then the young mathematician entered the room and saw the words. There was a tide of smile in his lips. The college lad had the unspoken confirmation that he had decoded correctly. He snatched the letter from the mathematician and read it. There was news of a new born and which was written by Rimee. He was about to ask the mathematician but until then the mathematician spoke himself.

“Rimee was my classmate. We liked each other. I was into her and she too had the same for me. She was beautiful but not strong; because if she would have been then she would have obviously expressed her hesitation to marry the businessman’s son.”

“Why are you distributing sweets on the birth of her baby?” asked the astonished young boy.

“We always dreamt to have a family. She always had the dream of having a baby. Her dream is complete today. It’s a moment of glory for me.”

The boy kept thinking; he tried to make his way amidst the love of the mathematician and the society who had termed him to be a lunatic. He found petals of love in the numbers of the lunatic. He picked the second last sweet for himself and offered the last sweet to the mathematician and celebrated the birth of Rimee’s daughter. All he could do was celebrating the birth of a new born or cherish the loyalty in the heart of a lover.