Her City of Joy

It would be a busy day..hufff.. thought Naina. She checked the time restlessly, cursing the traffic and administration, shooing away the occasional knocks in the cab window by the traffic vendors and beggars.  She much reach office in time. Protests in the streets during office hours have worsened the condition. She is feeling uncomfortable in the Michelin jacket that she bought recently, fanning herself occasionally. She had obviously overestimated the winter in the city before buying it. She hastily reaches out to the calendar in her phone to check the schedules for the day. Suddenly something caught her attention and gave her a chill.

It was the date.  It has been four years now. She remembers how she used to plan for months ahead of this day then. The cake, the flowers, the food, the venue, the gifts, the guests.. all were done secretly and executed perfectly. She liked to see the astonished smile on his face which made her feel so very proud of herself.

She remembered the times when she dated him. The hopping around the city bunking college, tea from the road side tea shops, the auto rides, the travelling in tram to un-decided destinations. She liked the freedom and the adventure by simple bunking classes .  She was introduced to the city holding his hands. The Victorian book stores, coffee houses, the places of historical significance, Esplanade, Gariahat, Eden gardens, the metro , Nandan.. the crowded central and north Kolkata, the taxis, the “aste ladies”..the typical bengali accent, the adreesing strangers as "Dada and Didi"s. She used to be so anxious seeing the unknown faces around at first, the crowd she was not used to seeing. Being born and brought up in a small town, where everyone knew each other, she took almost a year to become acquainted with the city and to fall in love with it later.

The traffic has started moving. She looked around. The same streets where she used to walk holding his hands seemed unfamiliar now with the newly constructed flyovers all over, multi-storeys and shopping malls popping up here and there. She has grown up so much as a person since then along with the city. She is no longer her timid, innocent self. There was something in the city which made her stay back. It has a soul of its own. Always happy, always moving, always friendly. She felt warm walking in the same streets alone. She never ever felt the city was mocking at her. The unfamiliar faces around didn’t seem so unfamiliar now.

The city puzzled her as a newcomer but later it aroused a feeling of nostalgia while she was away. May be that is why it was once named “The City of Joy”, the city which she proudly call hers home now.

 

Is This Love : Part 2

Continued from: Part1 .....

Naina had been quite restless recently. Tarun had not come online for weeks now.

She spends her days flipping through his pictures and posts a zillion times a day, admiring them.

She spends hours analyzing the reason for his absence. Reads his last messages over and over again to get some clue. Nah.. Surely he must have been busy with work or has gone for some unplanned vacation.. whatever.. she decides to wait..

It was a lazy weekday morning. Naina had decided to work from home. Reluctantly she boots her laptop while preparing her morning cup of coffee. Scans through her to-do-list and office emails for work and sighs in relief. Nothing that can’t be postponed till tomorrow or till she gets over her morning blues, smiles Naina.

About an hour later she is back to check her emails again. She opens up her Facebook account to check the updates while scanning through her emails again.

“Tarun is online” popped up from the gtalk notifications!

Her heart skipped a beat. She felt a strange mixture of happiness and anger rush through her head. She had so many questions to ask him that had been flooding her thoughts all these days. Where was he?

She waited for him to respond.

10 minutes pass… No response. Unable to resist, she pings him.

N: Hi

T: Hey Hi
N:wassup?
T:nothing..
Nothing?? She pauses.

T:how are you?
N:fine… n u?
T:very good..
N:hmmmm..

N:long time..huh?

T:Hmm..i have a news.. J guess what?
N:what??
T: I got engaged!! :P
What! She pauses and re-reads the whole conversation.
N: what? You mean Sagaai?
T: na re…not yet…but will be scheduled soon.. J
N: W…o…w J J J
She takes long to type just three letters.. Before pressing the Enter she deliberately adds some smileys.

N: Whos the lucky girl?

T: it’s a surprise yaar…you will have to wait till I officially announce it.
N: congrats yaar! She finds herself gasping for breath.
T: Thanks.

She stares blankly at the screen…

Writes..Erases…writes again…erase again

T: ok..gotta go..catch you later. Bye

N: bye.
T: take care
N: J
*end of chat*

A slow smile touches her lips.

She rolls over in her bed and stares at the ceiling. Tears flow freely from her eyes.

(Disclaimer : All characters in this post are completely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or incidents is purely coincidental.)

Is This Love..

(Attention : Though many may not agree..... :P :P  yet all characters  in this post are completely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or incidents is purely coincidental. :D :D)

“Love is patient, love is kind, love means slowly losing your mind”, says Kevin to Jane.

Naina was sipping the glass of Cola while reading a magazine, suddenly paused and looked up at the TV. The Movie “27 dresses” was on.  Jane had met Kevin in one of the marriages. Kevin helps Jane home but is disgusting her with his cynical views of love and marriage.

“Love means slowly losing your mind”? Err.. Well.. May be……. Naina is feeling a lot of it recently.

Just when she had nothing to expect from life, after all these years of waiting and loneliness, she was feeling the same restlessness, the same old rush of blood into her head.

Her heart is pounding fast giving her alerts that something is changing. But what is it?

She had met him on a Social Networking site and has been glued to his web profile since then.

First it was a mere curiosity but then it turned into an addiction.

She has not even met him or heard his voice.  They both chatted often, a few times, for short and long durations mostly late nights.  There was a sad and mysterious aura about him that she found so attractive.

She knows the usual time he is online every day after his work. She waits for him. She likes watching the small green icon beside his name indicating that he is online, as if he were sitting in front of him. She posts random links, quotes and pictures and silently prays for a single like or a comment.

A simple HI from him brings a wide smile on her face. She cooks up all the pretexts she can to initiate conversation with him.

Yesterday while she passed the flower shop on her way home from office, she stopped. Looked at the bunch of red roses and went in. Bought them and placed them in the empty vase on the small table placed in the corner of her room.

Is the radio playing only the romantic classics lately or she has not noticed them earlier?

She inhales deeply the smell of the earth, of the first rains of the season. Ahh..just enough to  melt her heart.

What is happening to her? She is feeling like a teenager again.

She sees hope in his words. She just cannot stop thinking about him. She craves to talk to him.

 “Am I in love? Is this really love?”, she asks herself.

“Love is patient, love is kind, love means slowly losing your mind”, answers her heart back.

Just Another Day..

It was a cloudy morning. Cool breeze coming from the window. The Salmon-Pink curtain that she recently bought, gently sweeps her face. Naina tugs her sheet turning over to the other side, very reluctant to get up.
She slowly peeps through her half closed eyes. A perfect day to miss office. Suddenly her snoozed morning alarm in her mobile rings out giving her a guilty wake up call.
Reluctantly Naina gets up, still yawning. She is late. Her empty stomach has already started giving her alerts.

Within 30 minutes she rushes out of the house in an empty stomach…silently praying that she is just in time for the bus.

She gets in the last bus of her route just in time panting. She manages a window seat which has a broken glass. She cribs. Of course the seat had been left empty by the co-passengers because of the broken glass this monsoon.

She settles down as the bus starts moving and looks out side.

She sees the Sweepers sweeping…the shutters of the shops opening… people gathering around the vegetable vendor arranging his possessions …..middle aged men in the local pan shops reading the newspapers while sipping a cup of tea in clay cups….
She muses, as the bus crosses a local temple and how her colleagues in the bus raise their arms in unison to pray. She sees religious looking people walking in and out of the temple…
School kids lined up across various bus stops waiting for the bus to arrive…

All reminding her of just another day in the calendar…

But…Deep within…she feels the ache…Something tells her that it is not the same.  

She closes her eyes and tries to get some sleep. The memories of the past flashed in front of her eyes. The bunking classes…The waiting at the corridor… The late night phone calls which lasted till the mobile ran out of charge….The daily dates  after college in the library….Weaving dreams together….The Refrigerator color and even the babies names that were decided…The tearful  goodbye on the last day of college….


She jerks herself up.  Wipes the sweat drops from her forehead. Drinks water from her water bottle looking out at the window.  The view is blurred. She wipes the tiny tear drop from the corner of her eyes.

Her unfinished story. It been a long time but still it makes her restless again. She should have been used to it by now.

Her thoughts are broken by a sudden jolt of the bus. The bus driver unable to overtake another bus passing by has now started shouting standing in the middle of the road!   

It’s just another day. Smiles Naina.

LALI

Yesterday night I was unable to sleep. Thanks to the hot and humid climate of Kolkata.

As I lay on my bed staring at the white “golok champa” tree just outside the window across the narrow lane, I noticed a birds nest.  My mind raced back to my childhood days when how once in a spring I and Lali had once broken an egg from a sparrows nest, tilting it a bit too much due to. And how guilty we felt when we watched the mother sparrow squeak helplessly when she returned to her nest.

Lali. My first ever friend. We were neighbors. We lived just next to each other. She was a year older than me. She was born on the birthday of “Lalan Fakir ” and hence her grandmother had named her Lali. Though she had an official name, Indira, but for me she was Lali.

My earliest memories with Lali goes up to the time when her elder sisters used to give me a “Doodh Bhaat” which means a Dummy Player in all the games they played and how she helplessly stood by my side failing to convince them.

We used to plan the whole year for the major festivals. We loved staying back at home during the major festivals while all others were planning vacations to far places.

One Day while playing in the winter evening we saw Jaya Didi. I had not seen her since her marriage last year and she looked extremely strange and had a peculiarly swollen tummy. Lali whispered into my ears as they crossed, “She has a baby in it”. Baby? “Yes!”. How is it possible? Aren’t sent directly to the hospital by God ? And the women who wanted them just went there and chose the prettiest of them all? Of course Lali was exaggerating.

Then on one fine chill winter morning she came to my house panting. “Come out fast, Jaya Didi is back from the hospital with her baby”. I run as fast as I could with her in wonder and I saw a small tiny baby with tiny hands and legs as big as a doll. It was as red as a rose and we named her Rose.

I grew extremely jealous once when on her 8^th birthday, she had invited her school friends for the very first time to her home. I sat quietly on a corner of the sofa as she was busy attending her new friends. Then suddenly one of the girls asked, “Hey Indira, who is your best friend?”. She hesitated for a second and then she pointed out her finger to me. What a proud moment that was!

Her family was a crazy fan of Indian cinema and so was she . She had seen all the latest releases. I used to wait for the time to meet her during the Monday evenings when she would narrate the latest Bollywood movie she had seen in the weekend. Dialogue by dialogue, Scene by scene.  Pardes, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Raja Hindustani, Pyar Kiya to Darna kya, Dushman….. . Sometimes one evening was not enough and she had to continue on the next.

She was my companion in all my childhood adventures from picking raw mangoes and berries on a stormy April afternoon to taking our cycles and exploring new areas of our township. We played all sorts of games together but our favorite was “Tapan Tapai”. A minimum of four people could play this game divided in two groups. Each group had to make the hurdles using their hand and feet and the other team has to leap over it.

After the Class XII board exams, my parents sent me to hostel to complete my studies further and Lali got admission in the nearby college where all her elder sisters went.

Once when I came home for vacations, I went to meet her as usual. She blushed when she saw me and her mother gave me a box of sweets and told me that her marriage was fixed. 11^th December. I was shocked. Shit! Aren’t my semesters are supposed to be going on at that time? The most important day of her life and I would not be present?

I took the phone numbers from her mother so that I could contact her after her marriage. Though I was eager to call her each single day, but I hesitated.

One day I gathered all my courage to call her in the evening. The phone rang. A Male voice received it on the other end. “Hello?”

 “Hi, Can I talk to Lali?”

“Lali? Oh, you mean Indu? May I know who is there?”

Indu? Nobody called her Indu.  I regained myself and said “Its her childhood friend.”

“Yes, I am her Husband. Just a moment please.”

After a few minutes she took the receiver and spoke in a heavy and solemn voice. I couldn’t recognize my friend that day. I asked her whereabouts and she asked mine. I felt that she had changed a lot after her marriage or maybe it was just a whim.

Then after a few minutes I heard the voice of her husband from far.

 “Indu, Can you please stop idling you time over the phone and give me something to eat? Where is my towel? Why don’t you keep things at their usual places?”

Then a silence of a second or two.

 “Bye for now. I will have to go”, she said.

I wanted to give her my phone number but before that she hung up the receiver. 

That was the last time I spoke to Lali.