Monday 21 December 2015

Blotted memories :- (Nostalgic)


                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

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 .

2 comments:

Bygone Love!

One of the first poems, I wrote as a kid! Still enjoy the feel of the "zephyr of innocence" oozing out of these lines.      ...