Saturday, August 13, 2011

INCOMPLETE ACQUAINTANCE


Just walking on the road, in a train or a bus you meet some unknown people with whom knowingly or unknowingly you start sharing your life. Such acquaintances always make their mark in your life and stay there as a sweet or bitter memory.

While going through some pages of her life, she realized the same. She understood what that small talk meant to her when she met someone just by coincidence on that rainy day.

As usual she was going to her work, all by herself, her mind busy in making her agenda for the day. On the way she met her colleague, who was also heading the same way. They shared the umbrella but in a way, for those thirty minutes they shared their life, which neither one of them realized.

This became a regular thing for both of them. While going for the work whoever reached the bus stop earlier would wait for the other or while going back home one of them would wait for other. They never told each other or neither did they understand why were they doing this but in a way it was making them happy.

Like they always say “If it makes you happy, no one has the right to question you why?”

In back of her mind, she had an idea where this thing was going but in a way she was scared to name this amazing relation they both shared.

Because it is always good to leave some relations unnamed or some questions unanswered. Knowing everything is not good, some things are best left unsaid.

That day while coming back home, she didn’t see him on the station. All the way back home, she tried convincing herself and her heart that he would have been busy in some work. Her mind stopped thinking about him, but it was her heart which couldn’t stop itself from going back to the same point again and again. That night she realised that why is she acting like a teenager. All of a sudden she realized about that strong force which was pulling her towards him.

But it came like a blow to her that she got her responsibilities to fulfil and even he got his goals. But after all she was a girl, being practical is not always an easy job. For her throughout her life, it was always brain over heart. This was the first time it was heart over mind situation for her.

When she came to this city, she had her goals clear. This city has made her so strong that she completely forgot that she was a girl and even she got a right to go out and ask for her happiness. And now she knew that giving your happiness a priority is never wrong.

In a way she was becoming the girl she was then, all because of him and his warmth.

Next day she woke up, feeling all fresh. She walked to the mirror and saw herself. She never saw herself that way, the way she was seeing herself today. She kept on asking herself, ‘Is it a new beginning or just a new turn in my life?’

While walking towards the station, today for the first time, work agendas weren’t on her mind. She was actually struggling for the words to speak to him. There he was standing on the other side of the platform. He didn’t look the way he used to look every day. Today he looked confused, disturbed and tired. When she saw him, she ran towards him. But he didn’t greet her in the way he used to always do. There was something disturbing about his behaviour today. When he looked at her, his eyes had some sort of sadness which only she was able to read.

Even he knew what sort of relation they were sharing since these many days. It was just that even he was equally scared to name the relation.

She wasn’t aware that next few moments were going to be the hardest moments of her life.

The man who taught her to live a life for herself, who taught her to ask for her happiness without any fear, who taught her to love again was naming their relation a mistake. 

"The only mistake we human beings always do is we give a particular person the right to make us happy, to make us feel loved and even to hurt us at the same moment."

Without saying anything further, she just turned back and smiled to herself that how stupid she was to fall in love. While going back she had this little hope that he will call her from behind, but he didn’t. She left from that station and never returned back, keeping her love for him locked in her heart forever.

After 10 years, now when she looks back to that incident she feels like the real her is still standing at the station waiting for him…