A Love Story For You!

A Love Story For You!​

I was sipping hot filter coffee from Visaalam Coffee Shop at Goripalayam, <st1:City><st1lace>Madurai</st1lace></st1:City> enjoying the lethargic traffic on a Saturday afternoon. The evening tabloids had just arrived at the nearby shop and they were in the process of displaying the posters. One item of news shocked me: “Popular Tamil writer kills himself.”

I first checked my pulse to ensure that it was not me. Of course I could not hope to come a mile near the qualifier “popular”. I finished off my coffee in a hurry scorching my tongue in the process and rushed to buy the tabloid.

You might have read his writing in Anandha Vikatan. He is known for his soft, youthful romantic love stories. I was his very ardent fan. His serial “Will Flower Only Once” (Oru Murai Than Pookum) can be called his signature story and can be described in a very broad manner as quasi-autobiographical.

The hero of that serial will be saved by a woman and will be under her care. When most writers were chauvinistically describing about hapless women being rescued by a strong hero, this writer turned the wheel a full circle to talk about a woman protecting her man.

Probably he had wanted a woman like that in his life. And he did get it. A good looking, reasonably rich woman by name Hema fell in love with him. She was his dream girl and just like the heroine of his story, she covered him completely in her blanket of love which incidentally gave him the comfortable warmth of financial security as well.

Being under her care he could soon proclaim himself a full-time writer (a luxury which most of us can never dream of affording) and started turning out very good work.

Now I should tell the name of the writer. He is Rammohan. But virtually no one would know him by that name. But if I say that his name is Stella Bruce, then every heart would skip a beat.

Meanwhile Hema’s sister Prema fell ill and there was no one for her. Stella Bruce and Hema took Prema under their loving protection and provided excellent medical care for her. But she succumbed to her illness soon.

God did not bless the couple with children. Stella Bruce treated Prema as a part of their family.

And Hema fell seriously ill. Stella Bruce took care of her in the manner which he only could have done. But Destiny had already decided otherwise. In July 2007, Hema died leaving the soft spoken writer all alone in this cruel world.

The writer tried to live a life having only his past memories for his company. But that did not last long. Once he attempted to kill himself after penning a very touching suicide note:

“The life of Hema-Prema-Rammohan is neither the traditional poetry (marabu kavithai) nor is it an instance of modern poetry, which has no grammar. The love we three shared was simple and direct. We did not leave anything behind. Life ends here.”

His friends saved him and encouraged him to write more. He started writing a letter a day.

“Hema was quite unique. Her profound love, the security she gave me and the friendship she had for me made me live in absolute peace and happiness. Now I have lost my Hema, my peace and my happiness.

“I am standing as an orphan under the harsh sun of loneliness, lost in a frightening valley of emptiness. I can’t see the chance of any door of revival opening for me.”

And finally he wrote:

“The life I lived with Hema was pure, sweet poetry. I know by dying I will hurt my old mother. But I have no choice. I can’t bear being away from Hema. I am now opening the doors of death to go out to Hema. When lonely life becomes a punishment, death is the only freedom.”

And then he killed himself on 1^st March.

Writer Sujatha’s death sort of eclipsed the death of Stella Bruce. When I was in <st1:City><st1lace>Trivandrum</st1lace></st1:City> there were many writers who told me that he should not have killed himself.

Whatever may be one’s grief and sorrow, suicide is and can never be a solution. He should have learnt to detach himself from his wife long back, a writer commented philosophically. He should have learnt to live alone, someone strongly advised.

Well, it is easy to say all these things. It is easy to let out some empty words of advice. But it is extremely difficult to place ourselves in the lonely, worn-out shoes of Stella Bruce. Unless one has a wife as loving as Hema, and unless one is as loving as Stella Bruce, it is impossible to pass any comment on the writer’s death.

His life was as beautiful and as romantic as the stories he wrote. And his death as pathetic and as climactic as the endings of his stories.

The death of Stella Bruce is not just a loss for the litrerary world; it’s a much greater loss for the world of love.

Stella Bruce is one-of-his-kind limited edition models created by God. Will there be another? That will be an eternal longing in our minds.

Please stop whatever you are doing and be silent for a minute in the memory of this loving, lovable writer.

 

And here's his picture along with his wife.
love,