(After that restless night, a
restless Saturday afternoon bought me this piece... a continuation to that
story)
Two days before the school annual
function, I was on my way home from office when this rather pleasant but
awkward moment happened. It was raining furiously. In fact, it was raining cats
and dogs. I was riding home on my old, least admirable bike – a Hero Honda; the
bike I purchased second-hand with its appearance now more unattractive than a
widow inheriting five children to feed. That was when I heard a voice so clear
to my ears it stirred not only the skins of the eardrums but the nerves deep
down my heart, and even my stomach probably. That was the voice I had heard
once upon a time, the voice I had been so accustomed with. The tone of the
voice had changed but the pitch and the melody still so familiar to my ears and
unmistakable; sweet and soothing. The inescapable truth about the ownership of
the voice suddenly transported me to an era between joy and sorrow.
That was when I was passing
through her cousin’s house. And the voice was calling out none other than my
name. I was damned, really damned. I was shocked too. I looked out instantly
for the origin of the voice. I saw a lady standing in the verandah of the
house, yes her very cousin’s. The lady was beautiful, very beautiful. Even the
thick fall of raindrops could not blur out the vision nor deprive me of the
beauty, a rare sighting indeed. I suddenly stopped the bike on the roadside and
rushed towards the house. I saw her standing elegantly striking a confident
pose, a canon SLR camera hanging on her neck. “Hey!” was my only word… I faked
a surprise smile as if ignorant about her visit. “I arrived a few days back.
To… to write something about this beautiful hometown of mine” she declared
emphatically. “I just came back from a visit to the outskirt of the town” she
continued. Then a moment of silence followed. A silence in honour of the days,
and years that had passed by since her family left the town for America… that I
was not sure of. A silence in honour of our friendship that had gone silent the
day they left for America… that too I didn’t know. For whatever be the reason,
the short spell of silence instilled in me a feeling of profound sense of
nervousness… I was feeling simply awkward, really awkward.
To strike a cordial chord to
start a conversation was a herculean task, or a mercurial one, in that
situation. The conversation could not be spontaneous anymore like those old
days; our schooling days when we used to end up arguing on the smallest of
matters. I had grown up admiring her; each passing day and month had made me
fantasize more and more about her; her ‘could be’ look that very time. I could
not fathom how much space my name would continue to occupy her mind after they
left our town for America, but I preferred to assume that it had been erased
completely.
(presumably to be continued...)
#posted in Facebook on 26th July,
2014
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