Two Souls

Shatrujeet had been my friend since we joined the university to do our postgraduation in English in 1989. After leaving university, all my friends joined colleges as lecturers in English. Two or three of them teach English in schools too. We called Shatrujeet as Jeet.' Shatru' means enemy and 'Jeet ' refers to an adjective meaning 'triumphant.'

Shatrujeet had however no enemies in the university to triumph over. I was violent and aggressive; he was calm and cool. He told me that his father was an angry man who had given up his teaching job in a well-known college. They were a prosperous family and he didn't have to face any financial crisis in life. 

When we were at university, I thought Shatrujeet was timid and chicken-hearted and that was the paradox that made me and the other boys often make a game of him. He would simply give a cheerful smile when subjected to any kind of mischief from us. Jeet knew how to laugh away the jokes we made on him. He was an admirer and devotee of Ramakrishna and I adored his disciple Swami Vivekananda. I loved Vivekananda because of his daring, bravery, and fearlessness.

Whenever I challenged him to a debate, he slipped away from me with due humility and friendliness. Another reason for my not leaving his side was that  he was always generous with his money. He was a non-smoker and refused to chew betel leaf without which I and some others thought life would be an impossible matter. We always tried to provoke him but he didn't submit to the intended temptations. We even once wrote a love letter to him impersonating the most beautiful girl in the class. When the letter reached him without the sender's address, he read it and kept quiet. We concluded that Jeet was a total misfit in the class. Raju told me that he and the girl might be meeting secretly. In the class, we were vigilant to figure out if Adya and Jeet were exchanging secret cautious glances. In a few weeks, Adya, an over-smart girl,fearlessly wandered with an IAS officer's son whose wallet never got empty. We had a strange classmate who came from Andhra Pradesh and who was always on the side of the rude professors and told us to toe his line of a disciplined student's life. His argument was that since the professors were our teachers, we were bound to respect them and overlook whatever way they insulted us."A strange sense of justice!" I often exclaimed to a friend. After 1990, we friends got scattered mostly over Odisha and elsewhere in the country. One of us was lucky to travel to Stockholm for a Ph.D. in linguistics. Jeet was a boy apart and I had not forgotten him. He had captivated me like no one else in life. Only if I could meet him once...!

I knew his grandfather was an active priest with the Jagannath temple. Jeet's sister had got the job of a doctor in 1990. He had distributed sweets amongst us all. He had left university with a 2nd class M A degree. Love affairs were quite rare then. I knew Jeet loved a girl. I had said to him once: "Do you love that girl?" He had ignored my question with his usual smile of neutrality.Other friends insisted to him to admit that he loved the girl Arundhati.I never believed it, but one day I saw the cowardly-looking boy Jeet sitting under a tree and writing something. I approached him cautiously from behind and clearly noticed that he was sketching the photo of Arundhati.Without making a fuss,I came back to the hostel and alerted the other boys. An army of notorious pranksters marched from the boys' hostel to verify the truth and expose the timid boy...! But Jeet had destroyed sketch. All of us were disappointed and I was branded a habitual liar.Raju had told him to declare his love for the beautiful girl and then we would take the entire responsibility to get them wedded."Be brave...Be a hero..Like Amitabh Bachhan or Rajesh Khanna...!" He would give his foolish smile and go away.Another Telugu boy Prakash Rao once reported that Jeet would regularly wait near a tea stall within  the university premises so that he might catch a glimpse of his beloved.Everybody laughed at Rao because nobody believed him. After some days we saw them wandering the university grounds hand in hand and one of us called them two "donkeys." We were helpless and annoyed with Jeet who always craved my company and once he said  to me,"Do you know why I love all of you so much?" 

"You love us? That's a lie...Ha..ha...ha.."I was roaring like mad.

"Then why do I visit you friends regularly and talk to you all?" I pondered a little but refrained from telling him about the jokes the wild young men made on him.I wanted to tell him that people laughed at him because of those visits. 

I was just approaching 50 and was fortunate to find him on Facebook. I introduced myself to him on the messenger app. He instantly called me back and began to speak with sincere warmth and cordiality. He was a priest at the Jagannath temple in Puri. His father had died after two years of his leaving university. I went to Puri soon. My aim was to see my friend and if possible to tease him a little as I did during my university days. 

On reaching the Grand Road, I made him a call and he came out of somewhere and had started to speak. I inferred from the conversion with him about his sweetheart of those days. He was not shy now. Although now married with a family, he hadn't forgotten Arundhati. He triumphantly announced to me he met the girl regularly every day and they held hour-long talks. "Do you have Arundhat's number? " 

He laughed and said, "I don't need her number to know things about her. Our talks with each other and our relationship are purely spiritual...." He wanted to turn away soon..." I detained him for a while and we talked a good deal. We entered the temple of Lord Jagannath and ate the Mahaprasad together from the same big banana leaf.Though he discussed many things,yet I couldn't understand anything and said to myself:"Has this man lost his wits..?"

I got into my car in the public parking lot after we had a travelled good distance in an auto.As I started the engine,he came close to me.I forced down the window glass. He gave me some betel leaf and said,"I remember you are fond of betel leaf..Always remember the real journey of life is never outward or upward..It's invariably inward and endless without even a second's halt anywhere...."

I drove back home thinking that the real journey of life is inward.We don't want high-flying eagles but trees so overloaded with such heavy fruit that their branches can't help touching the ground revealing their limitless generosity.Let us now say goodbye to the high-flying eagles since we have had enough of them.A new age in  the offing..! Yes or no?An age of honesty,love and compassion resulting from man's incalculable courage and pure matchless strength?

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