The Titanic: A Love STORY
By Mayborn Lyngdoh R
“I’m sorry”.
No befitting factor than to begin my tragedy with a note of apology to oneself. “Let’s fly to Jupiter under the sea of celestial beauty looking at us, all to ourselves”. There is just you and me. The world is too cruel, it’s tearing us apart. The flesh of our everlasting breath lie exposed at its cruel hands slicing us with a blunt knife.
As sailing, we, smoothly through the Antarctic’s deadliest currents like a hungry giant before us waiting to be fed. Tides were too low to drown. It was not a full-moon’s night but the waves were roaring that night.
Know did we less, ‘Madeline’ was on a quasi RMS Olympic-Titanic with a history of drowning. “Darling, just swear you’ll stand by my side”. The Titanic was ‘unsinkable’; The Titanic was not an unsinkable ship. The other half, the perfect specimen, was an old broken sea-horse. Stainless steel, thick heavy coating renewed the ship as one. As one body and soul they sail. After a night’s sail in the ocean, the moon was full, the tides heavy, the currents grew stronger but the renewed body held on. It was not two but ‘one’.
On a cold silent night, the wind whispered a silent song. The mist of winter blinded the eye. The direction unclear; unknown which way to go, which way to steer. The destination forgotten; they were on the road to the promised land. The turbines were off. The rudder on the one side froze to the chill of a cold December night. The body was strained, the enamel coating turn grey. I heard an eeking, of contraction perhaps. The wind too cold!
Cracks cracked. Separating, Dividing. The thread strained. The foil fell off – exposing old wounds. You can brush old rust, coat it clean, make it good as new but the rust to be rusted stainless would have to force a camel’s hump through the needle’s eye. It hit! It hit! It hit an iceberg! The cracks cracked wide open. Split apart by a sharp two-edged unholy sword. From the one bow, there was a Mateo looking on the other far misty end of the better half at Del. Tears rolled down his eyes; tears rolled down her eyes, he thought to have seen. He did not want to let go. They have sailed too far together. Mateo stretched his arm as far as possible but the anti-gravitational force pulled them further apart. The more he leans forward the farther the other bow took her away. “If you love me you will let me go” that was the last conversation they had. As he stood there in disbelief, not knowing what to say or do, he gathered his one last ray of hope gently lifting his head with a frail candle in his hand against the wind seeking to invite the other half for one last journey together. The light in the candle died. It blew out. It couldn’t stand against the whirlwind blazing in her eyes. Del stood there, stoic, emotionless, heartless, but not helpless. She didn’t flinch but fire was in her eyes. The rusty impenetrable majestically foiled unsinkable masterpiece within seconds turned wood dust fed by the blazing amber of the strawberry breath she uttered at every restless passenger on board. The ‘Titanic’ sank even before it sunk. Perhaps, The Titanic took in too much heat in the cold freezing journey to eternity.
The glorious unsinkable ship sank as sinkable ships. “Till death do us part”.
“How can you stand in the dead of a barbarous biting winter wind as the chill of the night froze your heart, looking at the one you love whom you have had more faith than you in yourself and tell yourself, ‘it’s time to move on’”. How do you live after that? Jack sunk to the bottomless pit of the Antarctic’s undiscovered Mariana. His heart could not take it till the time it reached rock bottom. The uneven planks once a home; the atria and the ventricles which has been her humble abode, on that one unfaithful night – the combined forces of Eros and Poseidon dawned upon the warmth of his humble abode, his hut was consumed by the remorseless whiskers of a blue flaming lust. And as The Titanic hit an iceberg on clear waters, the proud, bold ship glittered with the mocked blessings of Captain Smith sank to the bottom of the sea.
Delilah wished herself a Maenad to serve a Dionysius. That was her happily ever after. The wedding bells he heard was actually a death knell; the beginning of an eternal journey to the eternal abyss prepared diligently for two years.
There is no doubt that she is a princess, but she was a princess in the wrong fairy tale. He misinterpreted the phrase “Mistress of the sea”.
There were no icebergs that night; but icebergs of perception.
- Mayborn Lyngdoh R
Annotations:
Eros – God of love and lust
Poseidon – God of the sea
Maenad – Servant of Dionysius
Dionysius – God of wine.
