Like An Untold Fairy Tale

The last three hours. They felt like three years. The corridor was long, dark and reminded me of an endless tunnel. I wondered why all the hospitals have their operation theatres at the end of a corridor. The smell of floor sterilizing lotion filled my nostrils and I felt suffocated. It was getting darker and darker. Or was it my vision? My eyes were blurred and I felt dizzy. I could no more hear the rain outside. I sat there on a chair with my face buried in my arms and white shirt drenched in blood, waiting. And I was praying. Being agnostic I was always confused about the existence of that power that oversees the universe. But there will be times when you need a shoulder to lean on. When there is no one else for a support. And when there is nothing more that you could do, but pray. I prayed for her life that was struggling yards away from me inside the operation theatre. Déjà vu, I thought. And I knew perfectly well what would happen next.

Six hours ago

I was at my desk in my office on the 16th floor of the building. The afternoon sun was shining right behind me through the glass window…I worked as a graphic designer for a renowned advertising firm. My innate skills in drawing fetched me that job. However, I sat at my seat staring at the open windows in the computer thinking where to begin. I was fed up with the morning session and had missed lunch for the work I had to finish off. Something was really wrong about the day. Narrow escape from hitting an auto rickshaw on the way to office in the morning, even coming by bike I had to get stuck in the traffic block for an hour and that unnecessary argument with the lift operator. I felt bad omens. Anyway I made it to the office by 11. A couple of assignments on designing a logo and making posters for two new firms were waiting for me at my desk. The folder had the copywriter’s notes on how to place the copy and a special note from the Account Head suggesting the work to be completed as soon as possible. Weird it was that I couldn’t make the slightest progress within three hours. I felt miserable. Was it with the day or was it with me, I wondered. In fact it was both. I knew what was wrong. Involuntarily my eyes travelled to the bottom right corner of the monitor. I had a jolt in my stomach. My heart grew heavier. The sadness that I used to tackle and had locked inside somewhere started to leak. You can get addicted to some kind of grief. And this one, it was my personal drug for facing the uncertainties of life. I made it like that or I would have broken down completely. The thing is you can face the world from a different perspective when you have nothing more to lose in life. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Anyway it was a bad idea coming to work today, I thought. Shutting the system down, I took out the laptop from my bag next to me. While turning it on, my phone started to ring. The call was from an unknown number ending in 277. I chose not to attend… Anyway I was not in a mindset to talk level or calm. It was better to ignore than attending and having trouble…

The laptop asked for the password…While entering the name I heard her inside somewhere.

“Nanda, will you marry some other girl if I happen to die after our marriage?”

I felt her presence by my side. A sudden chill hit me that covered me with goose bumps. I wanted to see her right away. I took a sudden glance backwards. It wasn’t sunny out there anymore. The sky was getting darker. The dark clouds that hid the sun in them were like a pair of eyes holding the tears. It may rain anytime, like the tears may roll down anytime too. She liked this gloomy weather the most.

I clicked on the icon of my private folder. Under the ‘Tools’ drop down menu I ticked on the ‘show hidden files’ option and a folder named ‘Pensieve’ appeared in it, which had been hidden for the last three years…Hundreds of pictures, thousands of messages and all the seven Harry Potter eBooks were left in the folder. And I started a slideshow. Everything had a story to tell.

She was a fair girl with shiny dark brown eyes and curly black hair. Her head was like an isosceles trapezium though a strangely large right ear made her face asymmetrical. She had the fragrance of sandalwood always and used to wear ‘kalabham’ on her forehead on almost all days. She was a proud and conservative little young girl. She preferred to wear ‘salwar kameez’ mostly and I had never seen any other girl till date who wore their shawl in such a neat way as she did. Sometimes she was just like a little kid, a really mischievous one. But some other times she was the most matured person in our peer group. And yes of course, she was my soul mate. She was the elegant Princess and I was the artist shepherd boy in our fairy tales. I called her Lux and she called me Nandan.

“Why are you obsessed with Harry Potter this much?” someone asked me once.

I just smiled

“What did you earn from that stupid kids’ fiction?” he wanted to start an argument it seemed.

“Everything” I said.

He was puzzled.

“Harry Potter gave me friends all over the world and a soul mate forever. It taught me what friendship, love and sacrifice really meant.”

That conversation ended there but my memories had a shuffle.

 

I was an introvert and reserved person at the time of joining the college. I seldom talked to my classmates. And they all must have found me weird. Even after three months of joining I had no friends. But that day when all were discussing to find a name for the batch, Harry Potter changed everything. Unlike other occasions I found the event very interesting and suggested a name from the book. And a few minutes later I heard someone suggesting another name from the girls’ side and I knew it was from the books only. I felt elated. I grinned broadly. It was like meeting someone from your place when you are in a foreign country.

Within no time I got two new friends. And one of them was Lux.

The rest of our story was stranger than fiction. I always felt our relation was like a fairy tale. We built a world of our own around the college campus in our imagination. We named each places and each person there with our own fictional names. The main advantage, it was so easy to talk about them even in others’ presence and they understood not a thing. And we wandered all around the campus always upgrading our world. Three years were like three seconds.

 

Five hours ago 

It started to rain outside. Rain splatters slammed against the glass window with such force that I feared it may crack. I took a look outside. The distant blur of trees indicated there was heavy wind out there. I was back in front of the system. The slide show had finished already. I felt a heavy heart. She was lost forever. And I was left with all those digital copies of her memories. One of the pictures I had just seen was still popping up in my mind. The best picture I had ever taken of her.

One Sunday in my hostel room my finger got accidentally cut by a blade. The instantaneous gushing of blood from the cut alerted my vasovagal response and I felt nauseated. But suddenly she came to my mind and I had an idea. I just wrote her name with the blood-dripping finger in the last page of a notebook that lay aside. After cleaning and dressing the cut I wrote under her name with pen. “You are worth more than anything.” And it was so happened that the book was my genetics’ class note.

The next day during lunch break we were sitting in the class. She had seen my dressed finger already and was worried. I couldn’t write the notes in the morning hours because of my finger. Since there were only a few pages she said she will write it for me instead of photocopying and took my books out from my bag. I was busy teaching my left hand how to write, just in case.

“What is this, Nanda?” she asked after a few minutes and her tone was unmistakably serious. She was holding the genetics’ book at me.

“Err you saw?” I didn’t know whether to grin or look serious. I looked at her. She was so angry that her white face turned red. Even her ears had the red tinge. And her eyes had two tear drops about to fall.

“You cut your finger for doing this?” She asked sounding angry.

I didn’t say anything. Till then I haven’t had thought of that possibility. I preferred not to answer letting her believe whatever she wanted. It was true that I thought she would be impressed by the act but her reaction was totally unexpected.

“Are you crazy? I’ve never expected such a stupidity from you. If you think this is love, you are wrong ok?”

I was thunder struck. I couldn’t reply anything. I felt guilty.

“And if you are gonna do anything like this anymore I assure you, that will be the end of our relation”

That last sentence was a severe blow for me. Like the last nail on a coffin.

She walked a little away from me and sat on a chair opposite, looking away from me. I saw those two tear drops falling down.

I felt so miserable. I never thought she would take it that way. It was up to me for solving the issue. But then I didn’t feel like talking to her. I simply watched her sitting there. Even in distress she looked so charming, so pretty. The reflected sunlight that was falling on the floor made her face and hair glow. The damp yellow background of the wall behind her and her bright cerulean blue and cream dress made the scene enchanting. Taking care not to move much I took my phone out and clicked a photo of her without her noticing.

She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. I was confused and worried how to handle the mess. In the evening we made our way to the hostel in silence. And then she asked me softly.

“Nanda, will you marry some other girl if I happen to die after our marriage?”

I felt strange. She never talked to me like that before.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked irritated

“No, seriously” she was calm.

“Well what do you expect me to do?” I snapped.

“That’s up to you, right?”

“Don’t you know me still?” I was angry.

“You feel annoyed on the thought of losing me, right? Now do you know how I will feel if you actually hurt yourself for me?”

I couldn’t answer that question for a moment. She was wise. I said sorry for my mistake and explained what really happened.

“Anyway what will be your answer if I ask you the same question?” I asked winking at her

“You know my answer” she had her best smile.

Yes, I knew her answer because our relationship was an unbreakable vow.

Anyway I was so relieved that the issue got solved in a happy note and a few weeks later I drew the picture I had taken and gifted it to her.

“Now, this is love” she smiled whole-heartedly.

 

Four hours ago

“Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,

Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead”

Adele sang in my headphones…I was riding my bike back home… It was still dark outside but the rain had been stopped. I have to reach home before it starts raining again, I thought. The day was an exhaustive one, emotionally in particular. The road was rather clear of other vehicles. It would have been a joyous ride if it weren’t March 12th. Seven years it has been since I proposed her, I thought. Years passed like seconds. I was lost in the song and in my thoughts. I saw a school van moving in the same direction as mine at a distance in front of me. My speedometer showed 70 kmph. And within seconds I reached behind the van. I couldn’t overtake it because of oncoming vehicles. The back window of the van was glass and I noticed a little girl waving at me from inside. She was so cute that her face reminded me of the cupids in some old Greek paintings. She was making all sorts of actions to catch my attention. I too waved at her. She couldn’t see me smiling since I wore a helmet. Then the van stopped at a bus stop and I continued my ride at a steady pace. But after a few minutes the same school van overtook me. The little one was still there at the back. And I could clearly see she was sticking her tongue out at me. I had to smile. And she reminded me of Lux again. She used to stick her tongue out at me every time she teased me. Again the van came to a halt and I sped through the dark road laughing.

 

It was a chemistry practical class. We were in the same batch but in different groups. The teacher gave an introduction about the experiments we had to do and the materials for the same. She took out a small glass bottle that looked like a small tube attached to the half of an hourglass, from the shelves. She started explaining its importance beginning with its name, Pycnometer. And then teacher left the lab leaving us to do the practical. All four groups got one pycnometer each. I saw Lux taking their pycnometer carefully and observing it curiously. I approached her leaving my group behind.

“What’s so special about the bottle, lady?” I asked

“Look Nanda, isn’t this cute?”

“Err what’s so cute about it? It’s just a glass bottle. ”

She had a weird look at me.

“Don’t you artists find beauty in small things?” She had one of her eyebrows up

“Sorry I’m not that kind of artist you are referring to.” I said showing a proud face

“I like small things. Miniature forms. They are cute. See”

She pointed her little finger at me. It was so small.

We both laughed.

“Anyway you want one like this?”

“Will you buy me one? No Nanda it’ll be costly.”

“No problem” I smiled

With a worried look on her face she moved on with the experiment. And I joined my group.

Within an hour the experiment was finished and both of us made our way back to the classroom together. Then she never knew one Pycnometer was waiting in my jeans’ pocket to make a wide smile on her face later.

That afternoon there was no class since we were having a South India tour two days later. Students wanted to go home for packing. But she was not coming due to some family related reasons. It was really upsetting for both of us though we had to accept the situation. We thought of having an evening walk around the campus before I left for home that day.

“Nanda, will you remember me when you are at ‘Kanyakumari’?” She asked anxiously as we were walking together.

I had to laugh at the expression on her face.

“You are telling like I’m forgetting you always. Am I that forgetful?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Then what’s the matter? Shoot”

“Will you take me to all these places you are visiting after our marriage? I’ve never been to ‘Kanyakumari’. I wanna go there. Wanna walk through the beach with your hand in mine.”

“Nice wish. But it is not gonna happen.” I always loved to tease her and make her angry.

“Why? You won’t take me there?” Her face became grim.

“‘Kanyakumari’ doesn’t have a long stretch of beach to walk.” I had my tongue stuck out at her.

“Oho, that’s news then” she was irritated.

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