WHEN LIFE GAMBLED WITH HER

It was still dawn when I stepped out of the cab and walked towards the entry gate of the Delhi airport. The early morning February air was pleasantly cold. I was travelling to Bangalore to attend a collage friend’s wedding. It had been four years since we graduated from the same collage. This wedding was also going to be a reunion of our batch mates. But what I didn’t know that the reunion would begin much ahead of time, right in the queue in front of the airlines counter. I was almost sure it was she. Same height! Same long hair! Same complexion! Curiosity had my eyes glued to her. And then about 60 odd seconds, when she turned, she proved me right. My ex-girlfriend stood two places ahead of me in that queue. We had never met after the collage farewell. My heart didn’t stop jumping in a unknown rhythm , she stared at me for a while and ultimately break the silence , saying , “hi”, with the vacant look replied her , ‘hello” , we both was in our wits end , didn’t knowing what to say. Many fading memory , incidents, questions tiding in my mind and I know it well that she was going through the same feeling, an emotional girl like her never take this sudden meeting lightly. Other formalities were done by me in very absent minded mental state. I couldn’t get recovered from her thoughts. Collection of incidents was randomly appearing in my mental kaleidoscope. Suddenly I found out her in boarding area waiting for the announcement.

But she didn’t see me as she was busy in reading a book with a geeky spectacle in her eye. Oh! That was my favorite pose of her, when she completely cut off from the rest of the world and concentrates on her favorite ink and paper world. I didn’t disturb her but kept gazing like I did it my collage time. Though I was not so bookworm type lad but this calm and soothing beauty always drew me to the collage library. She was so introvert and shy girl so that even a Casanova boy like me can’t but fall in love with her just because of that calm atmosphere she creates around her it attached me with her more and more. Apart from those girls who kept pampering me for my handsome look and try to be cozy with me, she never tried it, but when we befriend with each other she always talk to me as a very good friend with whom she can open up door of her mind, in front of whom she can smile, giggle, laugh and cry putting her head on his shoulder too. Slowly that equation was matured to a serious commitment, and I even today can remember the blushes on her cheek when I proposed her in front of our classmates. She promptly accepted it. I was smiling in my mind thinking of those days when I heard announcement for boarders to board the airbus. In the airbus her sitting arrangement was in front of me, and I didn’t know why I was so much delighted after knowing it.

She came after few seconds and gave a smile to me but it was more checked than it was been in the past. I was a bit astonished to see her that smiling pattern which I had never seen before. This time I found her more mature, more content, and more checked then she was. It was really very significant one. My heart started to feel an unknown pain and grief.

A sudden jerk broke into my thought and I discovered that the aero plane had just taken off. I took a magazine to concentrate for a while but again sank into those old thoughts, after seeing a picture of India Gate in it. Once the panipuri   stalls near India Gate was our favorite quantity time spending corner. Panipuri was her favorite food.

She, my girlfriend Niharika, was the only child of her parents and tremendously ill-treated in her family for being a girl child. Her mother was like her father too; she brought up her fighting from all odds as her father hates her and thinks she came to the world just to drain his wealth. That made her an introvert who wants to captivate herself in the world of books and reluctant to mix up with the society from which her father got enough support when he verbally and mentally abuse her and her mother. I remember, she broke down in cry when she first described me the nasty truth of her life and I assured her that I will help her to forget that incident because my lifetime love and care will sooth the scar on her mind. But I laughed my sleeve thinking about how valuable was my words that just four years after we called off our relationship I totally forgot the fact that she will come to the occasion as it was like a reunion of all friends.

 I was also only child of my parents but I born with a silver spoon in my mouth, never faced that kind of abrasive situation like her. So, easy forgetting of any fact is one of my characteristic features as I forgot the fact in the past that she was not like other girls. She was enriched with a uniqueness of character, whenever she became sad she used to cry, she never shout, complain or whine. Silent tear drops say all the untold pain she tried hard to hide in her mind. Even I come to know about those tears when that type of incident happened in my presence. Otherwise she used to hide it without saying a single word.

Firstly I got very sad knowing the fact. But I gradually I got irritated by her that nature and stated tagging her that behavior as melodrama to gain sympathy. As I saw that girlfriends of my other friends were not like that. They argue, complain, quarrel whenever needed, they had no complain with liquor and nightstand also, apart from my girlfriend who never want it, so I once the collage Casanova boy, the topper of the most wanted list of girls was lagging behind from those “facilities”, just for the sake of an abnormal family life and its impact on the upbringing of my girlfriend.

One day I complained to her of that and she simply walked away from my life without making any argument perhaps she guessed it before observing my behavioral change towards her. I got relieved and never thought that once I fell in love with her just because of the same cause, that she was not like other girls with a candy floss attitude, she never pretended it, never hide her real nature from me. She was simple and who understood everything in simple way. Suddenly another jerk and I again brought back to the real world and the airbus landed in Bengaluru airport. After the formalities here I could not find her, I took a cab and reached Rituja’s house, one of our fun loving friend.

It was her marriage where the reunion will take place. I reached latter because of traffic and I found the other batch mates were already there, and she too. She didn’t even hesitate after seeing me. There was no difference between her and other’s behavior towards me. I never expected the change in her. If it was before I had to see a hesitating girl trying to suppress her feeling strongly in her mind finding her love had gone away from her. For a while I surprised to think that, was it only me who had thought much about our past after that sudden meeting?

Surprise engulfed me completely when she asked me, “How are you Rajiv? I couldn’t talk to you in the airport due to the haste of formalities.”

I tried to be as normal as possible and replied, “I am fine. What’s about u? What are you doing now-a-days?”

-“Doing my PhD in London school of economics. Came here just for a few days to attain Rituja’s wedding” She told.

-“Oh ! Very nice! And say, any boyfriend?” I asked mischievously.

She giggled out loudly and said, “Oh please! Don’t ask me about those Dolts.”

I surprised very much and asked, “Why???”

She replied the toughest saying any woman can ever say, with a fake smile in her face she told me, “Do you think even I can ever be loved by any boy? When they mentally, verbally abused me in every phase of my life in different relation, in different disguise for being a perfect mismatch of this male dominated world, I never matched the way they liked to see me, so they always thrown me out of their periphery. And now I have no need to match my step with them. I have a life full of freedom and self-respect so now I don’t want them in my periphery. That’s it”

I continued to listen and can’t say a word just thought that sometime we force a calm greenery to change into a barren scorching desert.