17 July 2004…

Kul, Nirdosh and co..

For many it is something when you reach college, I mean you are still bounded in the barricades of making a good future but the length of the chain increases. You are free to roam, free to select, free to give any opinions and do experiments with the living and it is a proven fact, time travels much faster when we are happy and it kind of appears like a slag when you see it passing by.

Some end up in a good company and some end up in losing one, and this thing go with us for the rest of our life. I too ended up in a good company and with a person that I once imagined who will go with me till the end, Rumi. Nirdosh and I met at the tuition classes while taking lessons of Maths for our board exams (boards- the kind of hot spot in the life of a teenager and the only fear instilled in us by default since our childhood) and next we met in the admission queue of the college we were applying for.

Nirdosh had a child hood crush on Shelja, can’t blame him. She was the prettiest girl I ever saw and added to that, she knew she was pretty. Therefore, she always kind of filtered the male surrounding around her and Nirdosh knew her as a family friend, so aisles towards home for them were positioned without much haste. Time till I met Rumi I actually tend to idolize Shelja as the perfect girl, although arrival of Rumi was not a decrease in her indent.

It was Delhi, the capital and the young blood oozing with micrograms of adrenaline and a local boy with free fuel four wheeler and a wallet never running paperless and some friends to accompany and rest life will manage. We only have to make our ways for fun and live the life to the level above the fullest. We did all the fun mentioned in the memories restored in our brain data bases by our elder cousins and siblings, the one that we saw in the movies and in English television series. We did everything! The only thing that was missing- was to find what is yet to be done or embarked.

Mrs. Sharma (the ace arts lecturer in The Hindu; social sciences) always said this in context to Kul- he knows his limitations so he will go a step further from all of the students of this batch. Beware of him. And he used to laugh a lot whenever we used to see his work. He wanted to be a graduate and just that. He was never ambitious as he knew this trick to keep things inside him and wait for the right time to spill the beans; what just meant to him was his present.

We had a pact, spending whole summer vacations every year at one respective friend’s home. And that was the time when I came to know about his family.

“Son of an Indian Bureaucrat provided with all leisure in the book of a teenager. The only thing that lacked was the care and affection. When we were at his place, he too was treated as house guest and his father met him only twice in our fortnight stay and the only words Kul said in an explanatory way, “He is busy in making my future, just overlooking the present I have. And my angel left me when I was three and rest is me in front of you guys.”

The best time we had was at Rumi’s guardian house- a home with a terrace garden, two pets and an always complaining yet careful maid and one granny and oodles of good food. If someone asks me, it was 2^nd best time of my life having friends around and just living life and me dealing with the present moment.

Two people, who started as strangers, became friends and then became made for each other types and yet they would talk less and nobody knew what was between them except those two. They had the same answer in their armoury; we are the citizens of time and passengers in the life. We are just waiting for the right station to park our emotions for each other. They two never found such subway where they could take a mutual stoppage and later plan a journey together… but life is what happens when we busy making other plans.

Kul had to choose between the specially hand tailored future by his bureaucrat father or the small yet big nest “love home” where he would live the rest of his life with Rumi.

The questions that life puts in front of us may have an answer someday and the word future finds its best use here. Life will answer everything, just have patience. And the situation when love fails to find a home, even a life lived in a mansion feels homeless and there is no one to tenant this feeling…. You are the owner and you have to afford it. Hapless and hopeless, it turned Kul into someone he always hated the most, a person having everything yet nothing.

Why Rumi went just before the final year graduation exams, nobody knew. And it again comes back to the same, someday…

Why Kul chose a life that he never imagined he would be living, only he knows…

Why a perfect dream ended in a nightmare, time will have the answer- Shelja always tells me this; truth is homeless only because it cannot live with the lies under the same roof.

 To be continued!!!

This is second chapter of the Short Story. Read First chapter at – LINK