I and Nandita were sitting on the backyard of our flat. It was a mid June evening. A cold wind blew around us, delighting us both.
“So?” I said finally.
She looked at me as she always did, a calm stare, but always attractive and appealing. Her eyes revealing me whatever she thought and trying to figure out what I was thinking.
For those who think that this is a quite grown up scene, you are quite wrong. Because I was in third standard then.
I, Nandita, Tanu, Rishu and Angshu had been friends for the last five years or so. If you can figure out, I am the only guy among them. In fact, to say the truth, I was the only guy in our whole locality. There was some Indian ritual (I have forgotten the name actually) in which you used to feed nine girls and a guy, so you can say there was a great demand for me in such a thing, as all the houses in the locality used to call me in such an occasion. Surely the supply demand curve goes wrong here.
I and Nandita had met in such a ritual, when we were in standard two. And that was the first time I had felt some attraction towards a girl. You guess in class two you are above such things such as love, opposite sex attraction and things of that sort. But unknowingly, I used to pray to God that she comes to play the next day. Stupid but grown up things you do when you are a child.
This is the last time I am meeting her. My dad has got a transfer to our home place, West Bengal.
“Lets write letters to each other every month” she broke the silence finally.
I was a brave decision for a nine year old girl who can just write half-jumbled sentences. I agreed, I had to, there was no other way. We were not grown ups to devise better ways of staying in touch. The telecommunication area was not well developed then, and a call costs more than a kilo of rice, I guess we didn’t even had landlines then.
“Please reply my letters intermediately as soon as you can”. I promised so. We talked about how good the days we spend together, how much we enjoyed when we played. If I was a little older, I could had cried then. I had heard about “departing from lover” like things from siblings, seen them in movies, read them in stories and poems, but didn’t had the brain to say as why people cry.
My mom called me. It was time to go, already 7.30 in the evening. I was about to get up when she got hold of my hand and stretched her face closer to mine.
“Will miss you a lot”, she said with a gentle kiss on my cheeks. The first time I felt it was something moist that I would cherish all my life.
She loved me too. I realize it today. But we never had said so. May be we were too young to understand so.
The frequency of her postcards decreased from once a month, to once in three months, to once a year, only in Diwali, until it finally stopped when I was in class five. There was a reason. In all our letters we asked each other when are you going to come here. To each, we replied that our moms have told in next Christmas. Finally one day, in my childish pride, I told her to write me a postcard only when she is going to come here. And she is doing that. Now I am mature and we understand that may be we would never meet any day.
My class twelve exams were over, and I had got enough time to spare work. One of them was to search in Facebook by her name and message her. I did, got some replies, but none from my Nandita.
I wish I could go to Kanpur some day and lucky enough to meet her and getting recognized by her. May be she has shifted to some place else, may be she has already a boyfriend, but I want to meet her, someday of my life. Not because to get her back, but because to complete the last words, still unspoken by us.
The postman comes to our locality everyday. Sometimes he leaves a letter or two in my desk. Every time a I find a yellowish postcard, I get excited. May be its she... again.
Photo Courtsey: http://www.irfca.org/
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