Love Me Once Again...

It was still dawn when I stepped out of the cab and walked towards the entry gate of the Delhi airport. The early morning February air was pleasantly cold. I was travelling to Bengaluru to attend a college friend's wedding. It had been four years since we graduated from the same college. This wedding was also going to be a reunion of our batch-mates. But what I didn't know was that the reunion would begin much ahead of time; right in the queue in front of the airline counter. I was sure it was her. Same height! Same long hair! Same complexion! Curiosity had my eyes glued to her. And then about 60-odd seconds later, when she turned, she proved me right. My ex-girlfriend stood two places ahead of me in that queue. We had never met after the college farewell.

There was that familiar beating of my heart which I had felt the first time I saw her. I couldn’t explain the reason then & I couldn’t explain it now. What was it about her that made my heart skip a beat or two? “Please move forward Sir”, I was jolted out of my thoughts by the sweet voice of the airline executive managing the queue. ‘Sorry’ was all I could utter, while my eyes frantically started searching for her. Gingerly, I walked upto the counter to get my boarding pass issued. “Hi, can you please give me a seat next to Ms. Diya Sharma who would have just got her boarding pass issued, maybe ten minutes back? You see, we are flying together but she may have checked in before me.” I was going to take a chance in assuming that we were flying by the same flight. “Sorry Sir, Ms. Diya Sharma has just checked in but the adjoining seats are full.” I had to think quickly. “Then please issue me an aisle seat, closer to the front rows”, I requested the lady at the counter, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice.

I still didn’t know why she walked out on me and disappeared without a trace after our college farewell, a good four years back. It seemed she purposely tried and even succeeded in keeping her whereabouts completely under wraps. I was pretty much sure that she must have had a genuine reason for this strange and unexpected decision. But would I ever get a chance to know the reason, why did she all of a sudden decide to take such an unexplainable step? I kept searching for both an answer to this puzzle and for her for months but was completely at sea finding either. Time moved on and I too flowed along with it but I could never forget her and this chance encounter today rekindled my feelings for her. I was not sure whether what I was doing was right, but there was no other way to find out the reason why she had left me then. My eyes started searching for her in the Airport lounge. There was still time for the flight to take off & if I had Lady Luck by my side, I would surely get to know about my Lady Love soon. “My ex lady love” I corrected myself.

“Hi Sunny” That familiar husky voice rang out in my ear. “How have you been doing, baby? It does seem a bit odd catching up here of all the places after such a long time”, she sounded as if nothing had changed in these four years. As if we were just friends than & still were. “Am much better than how I was when you left me’, the sarcasm in my voice was clear. She didn’t seem a bit ruffled or repentant of what she had done. I couldn’t control it any longer. ‘Damn it! You never cared about me did you? You just played with my emotions till it suited you and then one fine morning just walked away on me!’, I was now shouting on top of my voice, giving vent to my pent up anger, oblivious of the effect it had on the people around me. Suddenly, I realized that I was been looked upon by numerous eyes, ready to pounce upon me for this rude outburst. “Sunny, there is a time and place for everything. And this is neither the time nor the place to discuss about our personal life.’ her voice was stern and meant business. I quickly realized I wasn’t going anywhere with the way I had started this off. “Ok, maybe it wasn’t very nice of me to start off like this, but what did you expect?” I blurted out. I was thinking, “well, at least we had started a conversation!’ “Look here Sunny, can I expect you to for once act with more maturity? We are well past our college going days, you know?”

“Flight 6E 235 to Bengaluru is now ready for departure and all guests are requested to proceed for boarding from Gate Number 18”, the announcement blared out from the airport loudspeakers. “Are you on the same flight?” I asked her. “You see, even I have been invited by Nikhil to his wedding and it really is a coincidence that I am flying by the same flight”, she replied back. Was there a hint of joy in her voice, or was I imagining this? “Look Diya, I feel we need to talk and I don’t want that to happen after we reach Bengaluru. These four years have been very difficult for me and I have come out of our sudden break-up with great difficulty. I know it is of no use now, but if it is okay with you, I would want to know the reason why you just vanished from my life?” I was almost pleading with her now. “Sunny, can’t you just get over what happened four years back and live your life in the present?” she asked with an inquisitive glance. “Don’t you think it is better to have a conversation about the present and maybe the future, instead of the past?” I could find no fault with her logic. “Why was I been such a jerk?” I thought to myself. I had chanced upon my Lady love after four years and all I was trying to do was find out why she had left me? Why not use this chance meeting to try start all over again? I sighed and replied, “Guess you are right. What would I even do by finding out why you left me? Better to start afresh, I feel” I was more relaxed now. “Let’s complete the boarding then” she smiled and replied back.

The next half an hour was taken up in completing the boarding and requesting Diya’s co-passenger to exchange seats with me giving her the reason that we were traveling together but had been allocated separate seats. She readily obliged. “Lucky that there was a lady in the seat next to her, if there was a man, there was hardly any chance of him vacating the seat next to a ravishing beauty like Diya” I chuckled to myself. The pilot announced completion of boarding and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the window seat was vacant, as the person who was occupying that seat moved two rows back to an empty aisle seat, which meant we had the complete row to ourselves. “This seems to be some divine intervention” I thought to myself remembering the famous dialogue from Sharukh’smovie ‘Om Shanti Om’ about how the entire universe conspires to make you meet your beloved if you want to meet him/her from the bottom of your heart!!! We were now 15 minutes into the flight and were cruising at high altitude. I was now quite relaxed and feeling excited to be seated next to my ex flame. “So, enlighten me, what have you been doing for these four years?” she asked, even as she put down the book she was reading on her lap, took out her reading glasses and looked towards me. Those eyes!!! Those doe shaped, blue eyes always made me skip a heartbeat or two. I vividly remembered the first time when she had looked at me in the college canteen during the ragging session with those mesmerizing eyes, pleading to be spared the ritual of ragging. I was simply awestruck and all I could do was blurt out a couplet in praise of those beautiful eyes. My friends were flabbergasted! “Sunny, a shayar!” Everybody seemed to be perplexed as they had never seen that facet of me before. Since that day I was nicknamed ‘Shayar Sunny’ in college. “Are you there or lost in your dreams?’ she asked me, gently pushing my hand. “Sorry! I was thinking of something else” I said. “My eyes?” she asked naughtily, having caught me staring at them. It was time for me to be a little more open. “You know those have been my weakness” I replied with a smile and a wink. She laughed out heartily.

“So, what have you been doing since I left you?” she asked me casually. “Nothing much, you know. The first few months went in recovering from the shock and surprise of your leaving me. Then I had to come back to reality. So, I just started arranging life’s jigsaw puzzle, kept hopping from one job to another, till dad hauled me up and asked me to take charge of our travel business. It was a good that he forced me into it as I slowly started enjoying my work, specially the conducted tours I organised for school children. I roamed around so many countries with them, each day learning something new, looking at the world from the eyes of a child. As things stand today, our travel agency has created a brand for itself & I find immense pleasure in working there as I love what I do.” “And did you find another girl friend for yourself?” she seemed quite interested in finding the answer to this question. “No, didn’t get time for that. And after what I had been through, I did not want to travel that way at all” I said with some angst in my voice. “What about marriage?” she asked. “Never gave it a thought.” I said trying to study the reaction in her face, but could find none. “What about you? How have you been keeping yourself busy?” It was my turn to be inquisitive. “Nothing much, you know. Left college and joined an NGO in Mumbai. We started working for improvement in living conditions of sex workers in the cities’ red light districts. We would travel from one city to another, holding dialogues with the sex workers and local administration, spreading awareness about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, arranging for their children to be brought into the mainstream and providing them with legal and health facilities. Worked with this NGO for close to three years but had to come back home to look after my ailing mother. I continue to support an NGO in the city and do my bit for society as a whole” she said sipping on the hot coffee served by the air hostess. “And before you ask me about any boyfriend in my life or marriage, let me tell you that both have no place in my life currently and I intend to keep it that way in the future too” she blurted out in one go, without any pause as if she did not want that question coming her way at all! There was something more than what was meeting the eye, something which I could not place but definitely something which was bothering her.

One thing was for sure. She did not seem to be her normal jovial self now. The stoic stance of the morning had gone. It seemed as if a cover was been drawn away revealing an interior, which was in turmoil. She seemed more uneasy now. “Diya, we may not be lovers any more, but I hope we still are friends. Is there something that is bothering you, something that you want to share?” I asked her with concern written over my face. She glanced towards me, held my hand in hers and slowly replied, “Why did it have to turn out the way it did? Why could we not stay together and have each other in our lives?” It was my turn to be surprised. What did she mean? She had chosen this path herself, I never wanted to separate. Why was she asking me this if this was of her own will? "Flight Attendants, please return to your seats for landing”, the captain’s instructions rang out and she pulled her hand back from mine and started putting on her seat belt. In an instant she had withdrawn in her shell and was looking straight ahead totally avoiding eye contact with me. In the next couple of minutes the flight touched down smoothly at the Bengaluru airport and taxied to the parking bay. Silently we alighted from the flight into the bus waiting to take us to the arrival terminal. I thought it was better not to bring up anything now and let her take her own time to restart a conversation. After reaching the arrival terminal, we walked up to the baggage belt and waited for our baggage to arrive. And then, all of a sudden, without any preamble, it came. She wrapped her arms around me and started sobbing with her head buried in my chest. I slowly led her to the nearby bench and seated her. “Oh! Sunny, I never wanted to leave you like that. I just did not want you to know the truth about me which I came to know just a few days before we were to complete college. I was afraid that if you came to know of the truth, you would despise me, hate me. I did not know how to handle the situation. I was fighting a war with myself, how could I tell you that I was the daughter of a sex worker, who had always been told that her father was an army man and died in the line of duty. I took so much pride of been an army man’s daughter and then I came to know that I was born in the red light area in Mumbai and my mother somehow managed to free herself from the clutches of the brothel owner and come to Delhi, where she started a new life for us – me and her. I would not have come to know of the truth if my mother was not detected with AIDS and had not confided in me the truth. She was dying and my truth made me hate myself. I couldn’t face it and just reacted without thinking. I ran away, afraid to face the truth, face life and most importantly face you. I did what seemed right to me then and then came my moment of catharsis. I started living and working for these sex workers. This gave me satisfaction. I slowly started coming out of my self-induced hatred for myself and my mother. It was not my fault that I was born to a sex worker and inspite of what she was in the initial part of her life, my mother toiled hard to bring me up in a respectable environment. I realized that she had fought against all odds to give me a good education and a decent lifestyle, and what I gave her in return was only hatred. The news of her deteriorating health condition made me make up my mind and I packed my bags and came back to Delhi. I stayed beside her and nursed her with love and care till her last breath. She was all I had and I was proud of the way she had brought me up. She was at peace with herself when she breathed her last knowing fully well that I held nothing against her” she emptied out her complete story over the last fifteen minutes amidst a stream of sobs. My heart went out to her. All these years I had been trying to find out the reason she left me and now that I knew the reason, I found no fault with it.

“Diya, can’t you just get over what happened four years back and live your life in the present?” I asked with an inquisitive glance. “Don’t you think it is better to have a conversation about the present and maybe the future, instead of the past?” I asked her with a smile. She hugged me tight and whispered those golden words in my ears, “I loved you four years back, I love you now and I will love you always. Do you think we can start afresh?” “Let’s seal it with a kiss”, I answered with a smile and a wink, drawing her closer to my heart in tight hug.

This is my submission for #MyFriendAlexa contest conducted by @Blogchatter. I am taking my Alexa rank to the next level with @Blogchatter

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