Blotted memories :- (Nostalgic)
A night before the exams ....It was half past ten when i finished the
studies , stacked the books neatly on my table and went for a stroll
down the curvilinear narrow lane which runs down in front of my home .
As i zigged to the right , glowing with a undignified feeling , as
though after a good meal , then and there a realization of loneliness
struck me suddenly . There was no one to share a feeling , which caused
me to vacillate in the air of anxiety. I had no one. For the first time ,
i wished her presence and i could do nothing but to remain stranded on a
lonely island of despair and misery. It has been almost two years .
Compulsion to travel along the trajectory of higher education drifted me
apart from her and created chasm in our bond of love.
I had no where to go that night, save to the little boarding house on
East Kolkata Street , where i would have to climb three flights of
stairs to my clean,airless little room . I had met people in kolkata,
many people,many girls of all sorts and traits.But i wished to see none
of them . And then i thought of Gurveen and the image of her angelic face shimmered in the moonlight .
I had sent her a greeting card on the night of my graduation from
school and forgotten her ever since. Now i wanted to see her; the
desire was intense and immediate with the first sound of her name in
memory. During my school days ,I used to leap into the bus for
the long ride to her home which flung to other part of the city.
Excitement of meeting her brimmed over my mind as the bus lurched
forward ; i cursed the traffic lights whenever they turned to red .It
had always been like this where Gurveen was concerned.
The door on the top floor of a ostentatious two storyed brown coloured
house would open on my arrival. "Hello, Siddhant," she said, as if she
had seen me yesterday .She stood before me, too small, too thin for her
clothes. The short black skirt flared out from the
slim band of her waist; the boyish shirt collar hung loosely, pulled to
one side, revealing the knob of a thin collarbone; the sleeves were too
long over the fragile hands. She looked at me, her head bent to one
side; her chestnut hair was gathered carelessly at the back of her neck,
but it looked as though it were bobbed, standing, light and fuzzy, as a
shapeless halo about her face. Her eyes were gray, wide and
nearsighted; her mouth smiled slowly,delicately, enchantingly, her lips
glistening.
Her normal expression and sense of worry on seeing me at first were " You
have turned so thin, why don't you take care of your health !. I don't
want my love to look haggard and lean as if you are deprived of good
food" . And the next obvious question to be thrown was "Tell me
what will you prefer pasta or sandwich?" She would eagerly wait for my
response and thereafter plunge herself in making pasta. And within
minutes rustled up with two platters of pasta enriched with piquant love
and tartare sauce. She felt contented to see me, while i hogged and
slurped it down my throat . We talked long hours of our favorite
ice-cream parlor at welkin street , where we spent so many summer
evenings together--and i was thinking dimly that it made no sense at
all; i always had more pertinent things to tell and to ask her; people
did not talk like that when they hadn't seen each other for weeks.
As
i rose from the chair to take a leak , the clock had struck half past
three in the morning , realizing that tomorrow i had my exams i stopped
painting, my colourful memories and continued to rejoice the pangs
of relishing, scoops of Choclate ice-cream with Gurveen at Welkin
Street in my dreams .
