The Girl in Eternal Slumber

“Who are you to her? Merely a random stranger!”

Alok was upset that Sandipan was having too much concern for Paridhi. Paridhi was in a comatose state since a decade. Sandipan was present in the party where Paridhi met with an accident which changed her life.

Till this day, he waits for her to wake up. He has a strong belief that one day, she will wake up, all of a sudden. Then, she will laugh. Especially that particular laughter whose chaotic sound still remains etched in his memory.

Alok again started his argument.

“She is in a state of minimum consciousness!”

Sandipan calmly replied, “She is just trapped inside her own mind. And so what if she is not coming out of coma from last ten years? Terry Wallis regained awareness after 19 years.”

“You have your own life, Sandipan!”

“I know that, Alok. Tell me something new.”

“Look, I'm a happily married guy. Me and my wife both work and are enjoying every moment together.”

“So you came here, after driving fifty kilometers, simply to present an advertisement of your happy life to me?”

“You are not part of her family. You are not even a friend or an acquaintance or…”

“Go on, Alok, tell me more.”

Alok gathered courage and asked abruptly, “Do you love her?”

Sandipan paused for a moment, as if he was standing on the crossroads, unable to decide an alternative to move forward. He replied with a blank look on his face, “I don't know.”

“Seriously, you don't know?”

“Yeah.”

“One-sided love?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me that incident again!”

Sandipan stretched his hands, cracked his knuckles, gazed at sleeping Paridhi for a moment and continued.

“The day was 15 August, 2008. I was eating at the same restaurant where she was hosting her party. It was a spacious garden restaurant and so I was able to observe all the happenings at the party from my table. She was looking really happy.

“She was distributing cards to everyone present at the restaurant. I was not an exception. Because after a few minutes, she came towards me. She gave a card to me and said with a smile, ‘Here's a card for you.’

“It was a small, blue, hand-made card which read in bold letters on the front: Open with a Smile.

“I opened it. There was a cute yellow smiley. Underneath that smiley, it read in bold letters: Keep Smiling!

“‘Do you know me?’ I asked.

“She replied, ‘No. But I have a habit of greeting strangers and doing small good deeds. You know, random acts of kindness…’

“I questioned out of curiosity, ‘Why?’

“‘You never know who's gonna help you.’

“All I could say was, ‘Umm, yeah.’

“‘Will you help me, Mr. Stranger in case I need it?’

“I wanted to say ‘yes’ but my face froze and my mind got confused.

“She laughed. Magical laughter, indeed! That sound could make any sad person happy again.

“She was laughing at my startled expression and exclaimed, ‘Look at your face, Mr. Stranger!’

“That brought a smile on my face. But before I could speak anything else, she went back to the celebration of her twenty-first birthday. She was just twenty-one years old when ‘that thing’ happened. She was five years younger than me.”

Alok asked, “And that accident?”

“I don't want to speak about that. I have spoken about the same, ten years ago when I had to, to the people concerned. All I can say out loud today is that, that she is sleeping since that night. Let it stay euphemism, Alok.”

“Sandipan, try to understand please. Even if she regains awareness, most probably, she won't recognize you. What is the purpose behind spending your whole life for someone, who cannot even recognize you?”

Sandipan smiled and replied, “Even if she doesn't recognize me, I don't care. Because I definitely recognize her. And I will never forget about her.”

On 15 August 2022, Sandipan Mukherjee, at the age of forty, met with an accident and passed away.

Paridhi was still in the comatose state, or in the words of Sandipan, she was still "sleeping" even after fourteen years.

Apart from other personal belongings, a blue diary was found in the glove box of car. He had a habit of writing diary.

On the page bearing the date 14 August 2022, a sentence was carefully written in bold.

The Girl in Eternal Slumber.