An Engineered Heart
by Raktabh Mahesh

PROLOGUE

     Though my gender differs, I had an idiosyncratic notion during my engineering days that female engineers must possess a halo around them. My curiosity to know more about this ‘phenomena’ made me infamous as a philanderer. Now when I have grown shy, I do not have any other way left to satisfy this curiosity of mine, which remains the same to date. 
     “If I keep everything bottled up, they might implode.” I thought one sunny day and here is my humble endeavor to delineate them. One may ascribe it to be my egotism, but I could not resist myself in getting inside the story. It was mine and I found myself very free to use that divine freedom of expression. To some I may have dashed pell-mell in the story, but that is the way I am finding lives to be. Human lives are nothing but personal chronologies to me. That explains the diary form of the story. One may notice the gradual degeneration from gusto to pessimism in it, barring the end. It is because somewhere I could not simply content myself with a tragic ending. Fiction had to replace the autobiography at many places and the end is one such place. 
     Being a curious student of astrology too, I got the inspiration to reach out to others in literature from my B’ day sharer William Wordsworth, whom we all know was a great romantic poet and probably the best nature poet. What he did is obviously history, and I dare not talk of history from the present level where I stand. There can be nothing like drawing a parallel between the two because I am not even a fraction of that dead genius and also because reaching his status is not my present dream. Moreover I do not possess that kind of optimism. It may be because we defy our sun sign essence when we are unhappy. 
     Back to my primary objective in bringing out the story, Sukriti is always round the corner for most of us. It is not an endemic of youths alone; it may happen to any age and in any form. There must be nothing to feel shy about it. I boldly claim that instead of writing this story I might have been doing something else, but for my Sukriti. I do feel that no sacrifice is too much in such cases. It is only due to the rapacious society that we are made to feel of ourselves as convicts, or as the real time wasters of the universe. I may have lost in the eyes of many and so have many others like me. I may have committed a blunder but the pragmatism, which has blinded our eyes, will continue pestering every single emotion of mankind. What happens in the end is not for my myopic perception to tell, but it will not be a happy ending for sure, that is my clairvoyance. 
     When it comes to ridiculing an emotion, we are masters at it. Even I have done that deftly at times. Now when I stand the risk of being ridiculed, I emphasize that no human being can become completely deprived of emotions. So one must check oneself thoroughly before going for slander. I can get points for that in anyone; so can anyone. It is with great courage that I am trying to present the reality, which includes certain light-hearted comments on sex. One must not resent that, as reality ought to be faced and must not be resented. Obviously the market does not treat the female engineers that way alone. In those places, it is just a figment of imagination and I am ready to accept my perverted status because that appears real to me. 
     Despite my extroverted exterior, I am an emotionally reticent man. So it is another area which needs courage. Who knows my Sukriti may chance to read a copy? I might be exculpated for many things, especially of the crime of forgetting an eternal promise. Under the aegis of this piece in hand, I say in the end that unfortunately eternity is a long premise, much longer than some of us anticipate it to be. This story has been narrated in a somewhat obscure way, because of my temperamental vacillation between the objective and subjective, while writing it. Everything in this universe is bound to have flaws. So kindly mail your suggestions for improvement to raktabh@rediffmail.com. Thank you. 

RAKTABH MAHESH