The Childhood Sweethearts

Shaila walked into the derelict building Amar Mahal Mansion, 32nd Street, Shakespeare Sarani, Kolkata. This is where she had spent her childhood and much of her adult life. No one lived here now. She walked towards the darkened steps that had stayed as if to tell a tale. Not allowing herself time to reconsider, she took a deep breath and started climbing up.

She thought of her fiancé Sahil. They had met twenty years ago in this very building. They had been neighbours and childhood sweethearts. She reminisced how they would both run out to their balconies, which were adjacent to each other and mime the steps to their favourite Bollywood number every time it aired on MTV. It had been their little secret. It was the year 1998 if she recalled correctly. They’d study together swinging on the hammocks that hung on their balconies, make up fun games for the revisions and be top of their class in their exams. The childhood years had gone by in a jiffy; full of multifarious mischiefs, games, silly squabbles and the occasional sniffles. Shaila was a dreamer and Sahil was the practical one. And one day, on the cusp of adulthood, they had found love. This took no one by surprise, neither their school buddies nor their families. Their families — ¬the Chatterjees, Shaila’s family and the Roys, Sahil’s had got on very well right from the start when they had moved into their new flats twenty-five years back. The mothers spent every other afternoon together, playing carrom and cards, making Shaila and Sahil join in when they needed partners. The families often dined together on Saturday evenings when Shaila and Sahil’s dads donned their chef’s hats and set up a barbecue on the balcony. Perhaps all this was a bit clichéd but happy families always are. And so, their children’s decision to get married filled the parents with immense joy and contentment.

Having swum in waves of nostalgia, Shaila had arrived on the second floor and was now standing within the ruins of her beloved house. She emerged from her reverie, breathless and with moist eyes. The deep gash in her heart was almost palpable as she drew breath. She had been carrying it for a few months now. She decided it was time to make that phone call to her therapist, “Nidhi, I’m ready, you can come in now.”

As she waited for Nidhi, she recalled the gruesome details she’d read in the papers on 2nd August 2018 about the fire in Amar Mahal that didn’t leave a single survivor. She’d been away on a work trip when she received the call that changed her life, engulfing it into a smoky haze of sadness and loneliness. They were gone without a goodbye, her family, her Sahil and his parents. It had been six months now and she’d finally made some progress with her new therapist to come to terms with the grief and accept her loss. Coming to the building for the first time since the incident and confronting reality had certainly helped.

She clutched Nidhi’s hand and sat down as she wept and said silent prayers for the departed and made a promise to them, that she’d carry on.