“Is this a right place to smoke?” she asked.
“What?”
“Sorry to ask, but I was fined for smoking in a public
place a couple of days ago,” she said raising her shoulders.
“Oh, really?” I asked her, though I knew how lame it was
to ask.
“Yes,” she nodded. “So, could you please, you know,
confirm or ….”
“Of course. I, uh, yes…. Yes, it is,” my words twitched.
“Thank you.” she offered to shake my hands. I responded
promptly.
“I’m Jessie, by the way. Jessie parker,” she introduced
herself. I was floored. Floored might be too big a word to use for this simple happening.
But if you are me – who had never been bumped into a situation where a girl – a
stranger, who is also stunningly beautiful, had volunteered to introduce
herself, not to mention by shaking hands – you’d have used the same or
something even more powerful depending on how strong you’re in your vocabulary.
“Hi Jessie, it’s nice to meet you.”
She looked straight at my eyes, and damn, because of
that, I had to do the same. I was forced
to do the same, I’d say. Dignity, they say. Fuck it. No offense to her
eyes, but there were many other fantabulous
whatever of her to look at.
It took few minutes for me to figure out, only with her
help, that she was looking for something else from me.
“And you are…” she started.
“Ah, sorry, I’m Prem.”
I offered her another handshake. The second one was better for two
reasons – one, it was offered by me and two, the most important, I wasn’t as
nervous as I was during the first; In fact, I wasn’t at all.
Honestly, it was a public place, and there was a rule not
to smoke in a public place. The person whomsoever, he or she may be, was right
in penalizing her few days back. But on that day, I seldom cared. It’s a rule,
after all. I mean, who cares about the rules anyway, unless we are caught red
handed. Moreover, rules are meant to be broken. Aren’t they?
She took out a cigarette from a pack, and was kind enough
to offer me one as well. She was right in offering to share, but at the same
time, she was wrong in offering without asking whether or not I smoke. However,
it didn’t matter, to say the least. Well,
did any men ever cared about any women’s wrong when he is very much happy in
her presence. I wasn’t different.
I took one, still fearing how to handle my first ever
cigarette in my whole life, that too, in front of a girl who seemed to be well-versed
in that front. She lighted hers, and then lighted mine. I struggled to hide my
struggle to smoke. I failed. She noticed. I blamed it on the cigarette. It was
easy; she believed it. Time and again, women
prove that they are easily deceivable. Oh, we lucky men.
“So, where are you from?” I broke in while she was on her
smoking journey. By that time, I’d
already killed my smoke.
“Atlanta,” She replied exhaling the smoke from her mouth
engine. I loved it, loved the way she did it. For a moment, I wanted to get one more cigarette from her and wanted to
get trained by her. “It’s just a five days trip. We came for a seminar.
We’ll be leaving by tomorrow.”
“Oh, is it? That’s great.” I said. Frankly, I didn’t figure what was so great about it. I didn’t even care
to ask what
the seminar was about in the first place.
“Nah, nothing great about it, you know.”
She was being humble. I loved the way she was trying to
be humble. Appealing, that she was, in whatever she did. Or at least, I found it that way.
That was just a start. Our conversation travelled through
different paths for few hours only to end on sharing our email IDs. Those were
my happiest hours in a long while then. That’s the fact though it may sound as
a cliché or exaggerated.
We took photos of each other with her camera. She
promised me that she will share the snaps with me, and that she will stay in
touch with me forever. For reasons
unknown, I simply trusted her. I felt she trusted me too, and that’s the reason
she was ready to take photographs with me, to share her email ID, to gift a
book that she was reading then (despite my hesitation to accept it).
“It’ll always remind you to remember me, to remember this
day.” Those were her words to convince me.
I wanted to give her something, but I had nothing with me
then. She would have probably read my mind. She asked for an autograph of mine.
I took a hundred rupee note from my wallet, signed on it, and handed it over to
her. She smiled and said, “Don’t mistake me, but I’ve seen kids running behind
us to get our currency notes from us, no matter wherever we go. And now, to get
one of yours is kind of special. Thanks.” She said.
“Maybe, that’s the way we are,” I replied thinking of me
running behind the tourists when I was a kid.
I haven’t seen her ever since. But she kept her promise
by sending the snaps in the next few days. From then, we have been constantly
in touch through mails and chats. We shared a lot. She was very open in sharing
her personal stuffs with me. She used to say that she trusts me a lot that she
can say anything and everything to me, that I’d help her in her bad times. We
never had any boundaries for our conversations. They travelled through all, I’d say. They will start at one topic,
move to the other, then to another, and then end up on something else.
Our relation continued for months, for years. I slowly
fell in love with her. I loved her more than anything that I was aware of. I won’t say my love for her was divine or any
crap like that. I won’t even term it as ‘a true love’ for I don’t know what ‘a
true love’ really means. All I’d say is I liked her, I loved her, and I
wanted to spent the rest of my life with her.
I even brought the topic “long distance relationship” during
one of our weekend chats. She responded positively on that topic. That boosted
my confidence. That day as we ended our chat, I decided to plan to get a job in
Atlanta at the earliest. How lousy that
was? I didn’t know then. I was building my own dream palace for us, for us
to live happily ever after until I heard news from her that she lost her
virginity to one of her classmates, that how happy she was, and that how
exciting that was. I myself destroyed our palace. I knew she wasn’t the one to
be blamed. I damn knew that. Ah Man, I never gave her any hint that I was in
love with her, let alone proposing her.
Days went. I got news that she broke up with him. The
building work for our palace began slowly. But before it was even half-built
again, news came. She thought she was in love with five different guys, and she
is staggeringly confused to choose one among them. I thought a lot about it.
Our cultural differences made sense to me. That’s
it. I never built the palace again, albeit my love for her, my care for her was
never a bit reduced. Surprisingly, I
helped her choose one. That love episode also lasted only for few months. Few
other episodes came and went by. She told me everything that was happening in
her life.
Months went. One fine day, I got a mail from her. It
conveyed a message about her engagement with her then recent boyfriend. I knew
it was coming, but not that sooner. Moreover, she never gave me a hint on this.
She wanted to surprise me, it seems. She wrote that in her mail. I was a bit disappointed
on reading the mail; maybe because she didn’t inform me about her engagement in
our previous chats or maybe because she is not going to be my better half ever.
But frankly, I was happy for her. I replied my wishes to her.
She had mentioned a P.S. message in the mail asking me to
come online in exactly 2 hours’ time. But I didn’t. After few hours, I decided
to send her a mail, advising her how to keep her marriage strong forever. It’s
not like I was qualified to advise her and all, but I knew (she too does) I was
far better than her. At the end of the mail, I added a note that I’d be online
the next day. I really needed at least a
day to come out of the disappointment.
Meanwhile, in the next few months, I got an offer for a
job in Atlanta (not easily, as you might know). I didn’t tell her about it as I
was still contemplating whether or not to take the job. But, deep within, I
wished to attend her wedding which was scheduled in the next six months.
It was hard for me when I finally decided not to go to
Atlanta for the job. From then I was thinking what gift I should send her for
her wedding. Exactly ten days before her wedding, I decided to send her the one
that would make her smile on the most important day of her life.
I sent her the book – “Are you still there God? It's me, Margaret” – that she gifted
me on the day we first met, along with a hundred rupee note, of course, with my
signature. I also sent a note “I don’t need anything, anymore, to remind me to
remember you forever. You will always be remembered till my last breath. My
memory is sharp, you see. Hope to see
you one day, in person. Happy married life. And, hey, have my gifts safe forever.”
That night, all I thought
was that the book will still be one of the most valued gifts I had ever received. It's just that the book won’t be with me anymore, but
memories will, always.
