I reached
his home at sharp 8 pm. It was the month of November and there was freezing
cold outside. I was shivering, so to warm myself, I was rubbing my hands
against each other. I rang the bell and after three minutes, Aradhya, Mr
Mehra’s daughter opened the door. And she offered her hand for a handshake and
we shook hands. She let me in and said mom is not at home and dad is in the
washroom. I sat down on the sofa and she settled opposite me. She had been an
intimate friend of mine for a while. Garruslous by nature, she started talking
and I sat there gazing into her pretty face and listening to her sweet
chirping. I was feeling that eternity should start now. But Mr. Mehra turned up
in a few minutes and cut in on us. Before long, I found myself talking to him
about my new novel completing forgetting his precious daughter with her blue
eyes.
Being close
friends, Aradhya and I would often meet and share the burdens of each others’
hearts. One day, we were sitting in the serene atmosphere of a park. All of a
sudden, she became sentimental and told me that her parents were compelling her
to agree to marry an affluent young businessman she didn’t like. She recounted
how her parents had been pestering her. Her words were a mixture of fears and
frustrations. I was just gazing at her and my heart was immensely troubled at
her plight. I couldn’t believe that the Mr Mehra I knew could do that. As soon
she finished I blurted ‘‘I think I am in love with you.’’ I don’t know why and
how I did that instead of trying to compose her. I was flabbergasted at my own
behavior. She sprang from the bench still with tears in her eyes. But these
droplets rolling down her maddeningly beautiful cheeks could no longer be
called the tears of sorrow. Her face lit up and crying harder, she said,
‘’Really? Still shocked by my proposal to her that came out of nowhere, I
absent-mindedly said, ‘’Yes’. Then she hugged
me crying harder and said, ‘’I love you too.’’ I was still unable to make out
what had happened. Is it for this reason that people call it falling in love?
It’s not voluntary but you fall into it. Whatever it was, it was great.
Something was surging in me and I was feeling I had melted from the feeling
that I was experiencing. It’s indescribable. After a long intimate
conversation, we had to part.
While
driving back home I was experiencing strange things. My heart was hopping. I
was feeling fulfilled. Nature was adding
fuel to my passion. The sound of the chilling wind was music to my ears. For
the first time I was feeling so good in life and all was the magic was of love.
Soon our meetings turned into dates and their frequency increased. But who knew
what would happen next.
Soon I was
profoundly involved in writing my new book. From early morning hours till late
night , I was either thinking or writing.
My passion for my book seemed to have supplanted my passion for
everything and everyone else. Why and how
I cannot tell. Every night, after drafting the final copy of my daily
portion of writing, I would check my mobile to find 50 missed calls of Aradhya.
Too worn out myself and assuming that, she would have gone to sleep, I would
evade calling her at night too. I couldn’t explain my apathy to my newly found
love. Probably my passion for my book had consumed me.
One day when
I was taking my lunch I got a message on my mobile and I checked it, it was
from her, she had written ‘‘just came out from the psychiatrist’s clinic, very
depressed, want to meet you in the same park, urgent.’’
I
immediately drove to the park. She was sitting there in a pink suit. There were
tears in her eyes. I went near her and asked ‘Aradhya, what happened?’ She
replied ‘I am suffering from Bi Polar Disorder.’
She said ‘My
parents are forcing me to marry that opulent businessman. But I love you and
can’t live without you. But you have totally forsaken me. You don’t even answer
my call, let alone meeting.
This time,
her tears did not seem to move me much. I replied ‘’No darling, I ain’t
forsaken you. I just want to finish my book and then I will devote my whole
life to you. This book is gonna be a best-seller, I tell you.’’ But, can’t you
even talk to me?’’
I added
‘Okay, I promise, I will talk with you every day on the phone.’
It was
Wednesday, the time was around 11 pm, and I had not slept for more than two
hours in previous two days. I was typing on my laptop when I got a call, it was
her call. So I got up from my chair and answered her call. ‘’How are you? What are you doing?’’, said
she.
I said ‘I
was just typing.’ My sister came inside without knocking at the door with a
glass of milk and I shouted at her not knowing why. Aradhya said ‘Why are you
so exasperated? Why do you talk with your family like this?’
I said ‘I am
a bloody writer I can do whatever I want to.’
She said
‘but still, they are your family.’
I
disconnected the phone call and I came back to my desk to type, my phone rang
again but I didn’t answer and it kept ringing. After the interval of a few
minutes, it was the fourth call when I answered and snapped ‘why are you
disturbing me? What do you think of yourself? Have you called to teach me how
to behave with my family? If it’s so, thank you very much, now get lost.’ And I
hung up on her and switched the mobile
off and I started typing again. In a little while, I came back to my senses and
it flashed on me that I had done her a great wrong. She was suffering from Bi
Polar Disorder. How could I do that? I switched it on and I dialed her number
but it was switched off.
Two weeks
had passed since that incident and I was very close to completing my book. A lot had happened in these two weeks. I had
quarrelled with my parents also and was living in a new apartment. I called her
many times but she didn’t answer and I was too occupied to go meet her.
It was a
Monday, when I got a message and I checked it, it was her message, she had
written ‘Please come and meet me at Starbucks Café, maybe after this I will
never meet you.’ I quickly came out of my apartment, Starbucks Café was in Raj
Nagar just five minutes drive from my apartment, I come down and I saw that
there was heavy traffic jam on the road so I decided to run. I reached there in
ten minutes as I reached near the cafe she was clearly visible to me from the
window. She sat in the Starbucks café, sipping her coffee and staring out of
the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her covered with blue silk
scarf but still some portion of it was still visible. I went near her and sat
on the opposite chair, everyone was already throwing odd looks at me. I said
‘Aradhya, what happened?’
She turned
towards me completely she was crying and scared, there was a laceration on her
face and it was fresh, there were many more marks on her hands, neck and
cheeks. I kept my hands on her, she started sobbing, I got up and I went and
sat next to her and I gave her a hug. My eyes fell on that knife which was half
visible, I removed the blue silk scarf from it, it was a blood stained knife, I
looked around, by now I was the centre of concentration of the whole café, and
everyone was looking at me throwing me criminal looks. I wrapped it again and I
hid it in her hand bag, I asked her again the same question but she kept on
crying, I brought her in my arms and asked her again ‘Aradhya, tell me what
happened?’ wiping hr tears.
She said
‘Murder!’
I said
‘What?’ in a horror look.
She said ‘I
had killed my uncle.’ And she started crying more.
She asked a
moment later, will they give me a death sentence? Or will they send me to jail
for my whole life?’
She was
sobbing in my arms, tears rolled down my cheeks, I added ‘Aradhya, just tell me
the whole thing.’
She started
saying, her voice was mixed with fear, cry, and she was shivering.
She said
‘After we have a fight that day, I became even more depressed, my uncle was
newly married and his wife was a psychiatrist so I should go to her for
counseling. As aunty was not having good relationship with uncle so she should
always be alone and soon we became good friends, we started sharing our things,
we started going for shopping together and we should also go for movies, but
when today I went to her house for my regular counseling, uncle opened the door
and he let me in. He said that Aunty has gone to neighbor’s house and she will
return soon, he said me to sit on the sofa and he went inside. After sometime
Uncle came and sat on my adjacent sofa and he started talking with me. After
sometimes he kept his hand on my thigh and I removed it immediately. He said
‘Aradhya, I love you.’ I was shocked to hear that, I can’t believe that my
uncle had said it. He shifted on my sofa and started kissing me madly all over
my face, I was in an extreme shock, I was even not resisting. He threw me down
from the sofa and he fell over me, he caught my hands in his tight grip, I was
not able to free my hands from him and he started kissing me, and after
sometimes he started tearing my top, my senses came back and I somehow threw
him away and I ran towards the dining table but he followed me there too, he
threw me again on top of the dining table and caught my one hand while his
another hand was busy working on my rest of the body, my another hand which was
free reached a fruit basket kept on the dining table, when that demon was
kissing me it reminded me of the one which we once shared and I started
attacking him with that knife until he died and fall away from me, I quickly
got up and started moving towards the main door and I got a blue scarf on the
sofa, I wrapped this knife in it and I had brought it here.’
Tears were
rolling heavily down my checks. She said ‘I had informed police, they will be
reaching here soon.’
I asked
‘but, why?’
She said
‘till when I will run from them, they will catch me one day, so why not today?’
We sat there
in silence holding each other’s hand and looking at each other’s eyes. Soon the
police vehicles came and lady constables arrested her, they put the knife in
the evidence bag and took her away, my eyes followed them till the point from where
they took a sharp turn and soon vanished from my sight. While paying the bill I
could not believe it is a reality, I wish that it should be one of my bad
dreams, but it was not. A waitress came to me and said that she had forgotten
her handkerchief and she handed it to me. I sat down on my knees and I was just
looking at her handkerchief.
“If you will not care for your dear ones, they
will definitely slip away from your hands like the time.”
I was just
questioning myself that if I would have given little time to her than this
might not happen if I should taken care of her than this she will not have to
face this.
I was in the
court and judge had already taken his decision, she had been declared six
months imprisonment, as it was not an intentional murder but a self defense
activity.
After a
month I talked with my parents that I wanted to marry her after she comes out
of the jail.
Mom said
‘beta, you will marry a girl who had been raped, do you even know what else her
uncle had done with her?’
I said ‘no
mom, that was the truth which she had told in the court, and I will marry her
because I will not be able to give any other girl enough happiness that I can
give it to her.’
And within a
month they all agreed.
After six months.
I was
waiting for her outside the jail with her parents as she came out she hugged
her parents and then we hugged each other. I took her and her parents to the
mall from where my book was to be released, as we reached their media persons
started taking the pictures, I gave the book in her hands and they clicked our
photos. She opened the book and read the dedication page, it was dedicated to
her, tears came out from her eyes, and I was able to see the same innocence in
her eyes, once I have seen in the court. I took out a ring from my pocket and
sat on my knees and asked ‘Will you marry me?’
She nodded
her head and I slipped the ring in her finger and the whole mall was filled
with clapping and whistling sounds.
-Aditya Singh
No comments:
Post a Comment