REUNION
Chapter 1
“I’d go for TRUTH.”
“OK…Here’s the deal….Tell us something you’ve never told to anyone, not even to your wife….Something which no one knows about….And it shouldn’t be like WHEN-I-LAST-PEED-IN-MY-PANTS kind of a thing….”
Chuckles everywhere.
“Hey hey hey…Its no less than a dare!! Telling something like that..”
“It’s a truth alright…Is it not, everyone??”
Nods everywhere.
The participant stole a glance at someone seated not very far.
Perhaps its time. The day and place is also perfectly
suited. The secret should die where it was born . And today, here at
room B207, everything comes to a full circle.
He didn’t exactly expect a reply to this anonymous call of friendship. Yet there lay before him an answer. Was it someone prank-ing? But he didn’t know anybody from any other department who can play such a prank on him.
Actually, in his college, there was no dedicated classroom for any department. The rooms kept shifting. Graph theory B005, Strength of materials B102, Maths A012, so on and so forth. The classrooms served almost all the batches. So his seat in B207 was used by some other student from some other department, might be some other year, You could never know. The only thing is that, when he had scribbled “Hi this is ME. Want to be my friend?”, someone had actually written back “Hi YOU, its ME. What are you called by others?”. Someone who might be sharing this seat with him. Not from his department, someone completely unknown.
Romantic and utterly mysterious. Just the way he liked it.
Chapter 2
“Truth and Dare?” asked Rajesh, eyebrows raised and mouth agape, as if he had never heard anything as outrageous as that. “By this November I am turning 33 and you 35, and yet you want…” Sporting a shining bald spot of the diameter of a cricket ball (his job at a leading IT firm could account for that) and a protruding paunch belly on what seemed to be like an athletic body some years back (regular dosage of beer could account for that), Rajesh looked more than 33, somewhere in the vicinity of 40.
“Why stopping at that dear? Only 35? “, interjected Sameera, “Just a two year gap? I’m of your mom’s age probably by now, ain’t I actually?”
Sameera is Rajesh’s wife. And she for sure didn’t look 35. Her skin was still as smooth as on the first day at college, eyes still as bright. She could almost feel some men around her catching their breath when she walked. The glamour of the “Madhuri Dixit” of the college at her times was still very much in place.
“See see see my lady. I never exaggerate. And its not what I tell. All this 17 years I have heard it numerous times that I look younger than you. And given that peculiar habit you women have got of playing with your age…”
“You would always be a child for your mom and dad. I just don’t understand their mentality though. Probably would have hand-fed you all through had I not come into the household and..”
But Rajesh wasn’t listening. His attention had shifted towards the door.
A lean dark moustached be-spectacled man had entered the room, and having spotted Rajesh, was walking towards him. Sameera vaguely knew his name to be Krishna, Rajesh’s friend during college times. She and Krishna hardly spoke. Rajesh had never showed any special interest in their friendship. So they remained like branches of the same tree. Connected, but distant.
“This man kind’a used to get on my nerves those days”, whispered Ratna, into Sameera’s ears.
“Ditto”, whispered back Sameera, as she watched Krishna slump towards Rajesh.
“I am not very popular. You wouldn't know me by my name.”
“I am just curious, nothing else. What’s your name?”
“Saarthi. You?”
“Puja.”
Impossible. It had to be a prank. No girl would reply back to such things. This must be one of his friends trying to pull his leg. The only problem was that, he didn’t have many friends. Actually, only one. But he wouldn’t do such silly things. He was too busy in his world.
But this just couldn’t be a girl.
“Is that you true name?”
“No.”
Another shock. A prank-star would play along. This made no sense.
“Then what is it?”
“Does that matter? I want this anonymity. Like the way I’m talking to one of those magic diaries, with an inbuilt system to reply back. No personal contact, no expectations, no feeling of hurt. I’m a figment of your imagination, just the way you are to me. Treat me like that. For you, and you alone, I am Puja.”
Little did he know then that this name will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Ratna whispered something in Sameera’s ears, and they both got up.
“You people carry on, we will join you shortly..”, said Sameera.
Rajesh looked at Sameera, and mouthed some words, inaudibly. Sameera made a false show
of remorse. Rajesh winked back.
“You two look good together.” Ratna said, once they were out of the room. Sameera just smiled. She knew they did. They had to. They were made for each other. She had known it since the first time she had seen him during college days. And after all these years, on the eve of this reunion, when all the broken bits of memory came back and wove a web of nostalgia, she could feel how correct she has been right from the start.
“You know, that Krishna guy, and his wife are getting separated?”
Even after all these years, Ratna hadn’t changed a bit. Gossips were her life.
“Is that so?” said Sameera, more out of politeness, than anything else, not wishing to carry this topic any further.
“Peculiar guy he is, you know. My brother’s sister in law’s husband, is a colleague of Krishna. He told my husband. After marriage, his wife found out that he is not really interested in her, and that made her feel insecure. Then she found out elaborate love letters hidden in his bags and stuff. No names. But very intense. They argued, and Krishna denied everything. She started thinking he’s having some extra-marital affair.”
“That’s very common these days. People marry, fall for someone else and marry again, then fall for someone again and marry again. Sick, really, but some people do have a sick mentality. Nothing can be done about that…”
“You know, they had a love marriage. You remember that girl, who was in our batch, but later shifted to Mechanical? Her name was Aarthi. South Indian. Dark tall silent. You remember now? Krishna married her. I really feel sorry for her yaar…”
Sameera remembered Aarthi. Actually she had never forgotten her. Still the mention of her name triggered a flood of memories. Memories of a time 15-16 years back, when they were in first year, when she was just starting to get popular. Disturbingly popular .
“Just pray Krishna doesn’t get a TRUTH in the game.....”, Ratna said.
“And what do you think, he’ll spill the truth out about his failed marriage and extra-marital affair right in front of everyone, just for the sake of a kiddish non-sense?”, Sameera replied, smirking.
“No, he won’t…but we can have him wrong footed even if for just an instant…”
Sameera just shrugged, and opened the door for the washroom. She never quite liked Ratna the way she liked her, mostly because of this nosy habit of hers.
“What? Saarthi? From when has your name been Saarthi?” amazement was written all over his face.
Saarthi said nothing. He had just started to feel that he had made a huge mistake by spilling the beans. He could just have feigned that all those scribblings didn’t relate to him.
“And come on yaar…Love her? You aren’t even sure whether she is a girl actually. Never met her, never spoke to her. Just such scribblings on the desk. Don’t you think its fool-hardy?”
Saarthi couldn’t help that. He was bound and gagged. Only thing he knew was that he was desperately, irrefutably, unconditionally, intensely, and irrevocably in love with Puja. Worse still, even after this 4 months of communication, he had no clue as to who was hiding behind the garb of that identity. Perhaps he didn’t want to know. He wouldn’t be able to handle if it was some boy picking him apart, thinking it all was a joke.
Actually, he hadn’t meant it to be like that. He wanted Puja just the way she had wanted him, a diary to spill all your emotions out, and yet feel safe, as it would never know his identity. He had told her things he had not told anybody else. They had developed a code language, by simply replacing each alphabet in a word by the next alphabet. When SECRET became TFDSFU, CRUSH became DSVTI, none knew what deep secrets were shared right before them.
All was going well. Puja told him things about herself, which perhaps she wouldn’t even share with another girl, same was the case with him. They didn’t realize that with those deep, guarded secrets of their personal lives, they were giving away to each other parts of their souls. What started as friendship, fuelled by the romanticism of mystery, ended as a blind need. They had unwillingly become an inseparable part of each others lives.
Chapter 3
She had recognized Sameera instantly. They chatted for sometime, the usual woman-to-woman talk. She pointed out her husband, across the room.
Aarthi didn’t bring up that issue. She couldn’t have forgotten, Sameera was ready to bet on that. Yet she remained mercifully silent about the incident.
She came back and sat at the space
she had vacated. Game was on full swing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Stop writing back….Listen to me, only you are suffering beacuse of this….This is absurd yaar…..Just suppose if it finally comes out to be a boy? What then?”
“What if it’s a girl for real?”
“Come on….No girl writes back to strangers like this….And even if it’s a girl, where’s the surety that she feels the way you do?....”
Saarthi had no answer.
“Let it be what it is, the best of dreams…End it at this, and there will be no heart-break…If you carry it forward there might be some nasty surprises waiting for you…Then you will forget how good it felt, will only remember that you were made a fool of….don’t let that happen….relish what you have already got, than craving for what might not be….forgotten the story of the duck laying golden eggs, have you?”
Little did he know how difficult it was to let go……Yet, somewhere in the deepest unreachable niche of his heart Saarthi knew whatever he said is true, very true…..
He knew he had to do it,…He had to stop writing to Puja.
What he did not know then, was that,
without any notice, Puja would also stop writing to him anymore.
“OK, Here’s the truth….”, he said softly. “I cheated on a friend, took advantage of his innocence, all for getting the love of a girl whom I loved dearly, and who, I thought then, would fall for him if I did not intervene in time.”
Silence. It was pretty late in the night and many had already left. The rest were mainly his friends. Some were not, but it didn’t matter. They would soon know. Such things spread like flue.
“Yes, what I did was wrong. But I was in love, and I was blinded. I know I can’t expect forgiveness, but forgive me out of your own goodness,
“During our initial days in college,
Till that I had taken it as a joke. But when I saw that he’s kind of dragging himself to a pitfall, I thought of finding out the prank-star who was doing this. Made some queries and found out that then Electrical first year (our department) and Chemical first year only used this classroom.
One day during break, I came into this classroom, when Chemical first year batch was here, under the pretext of finding a book I forgot here. There, at
I got her name from a guy I knew, from her department, and walked straight upto her, and asked “Do you write these notes on this bench?”
She looked up and stared right into my eyes. And at that very instant I knew that she is the one for me, that I’d be incomplete without her, and so would be she. Surprisingly I had no doubt that she would understand and reciprocate my feelings.
She had replied “Yes”, without taking her eyes off me.
“From next time we can do the conversation in person. What do you say, Sameera?”
She had just smiled.
I convinced
We started seeing each other more and more often. Luckily for me Sameera never brought up the topic of those chats. Perhaps she wanted to leave things of past back, and start afresh, a relationship beyond the range of friendship.” Rajesh stopped to catch breath. He didn’t dare look up into the eyes of either Sameera or
There was a rustle of clothes as someone got up. “Can we talk for a second?” Rajesh looked up to see Aarthi standing at the door.
“You know what,”, Sameera spoke, her voice surprisingly radiant and light, “I think you just prevented a divorce.”
Rajesh looked up, dumb-founded.
“Come on Rajesh, don’t give me that
look. You think I used to write all those notes? NO. It was Aarthi .”
“That day when you asked if I was the one, I couldn’t say NO. I couldn’t lose you.” Her eyes dropped, and cheeks took a crimson hue.
Actually I had seen Aarthi scribbling over the bench. I coaxed her into telling that she was sort of having a pen friend. She didn’t admit, but I could feel an undercurrent of possessiveness in her about this boy. That day she had gone to talk with someone, Ratna or Niharika maybe, I don’t remember. I came and sat in her place to look at those scribblings. It was romantic, and kind of funny to read. But only few sentences were legible, rest all gibberish, might be some code.
When you came and talked to me, she
was close enough to hear what we talked about. After you went away, she came
and silently picked her things and went and sat in my seat. She vacated the
seat for me, forever. Once I mustered up the strength to go and apologize to
her, and explain myself, but she waved it off, telling that you were not the
guy she had envisioned, that you were ‘not her type’. Some months later, she
left our department, and joined Mechanical.”
“So why did you ever propose to me, why did you marry me, if you were so deeply in love with Puja?”
Aarthi was silent. Then she whispered, almost inaudibly, “For you, and you alone, I will be Puja.”
That night, in the deserted half lit corridor, as
Its been a ReUnion
indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment