Filed under: Behind the screen..., Stories..., craps ..., uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 6:20 PM
She was happy, holding his hand and walking in that evening, on that road rarely taken by anyone.
It was not easy for her to take the decision… the decision to come out the cocoon of her fear (which she misunderstood as her strength) and say yes to him. But once she came out of it, there was just miles and miles of love stretched in front of her.
A relationship, as she used to think, was as complicated as the electronics circuits in an Advanced Electronics Circuits book of her 7th semester, engineering course, with some extra capacitors and resistors casually connected here and there to confuse the student even more. Little did she know that, in a relationship, the love output is trillion times the input irrespective of all the resistors present in the circuit.
She smiled coyly; looked at him, who was walking beside her. He lighted his cigarette and sucked in a mouthful of smoke, played with it in his chest for about half a minute before letting it out. She watched as white smoke came out of his mouth, some out of his nostrils. She did not like the smell. It made her feel so weak in the stomach.
“Aur ek baar ‘I love you’ bolo na” [Please say 'I love you' once again], she told him casually, expecting a smile following a small “I love you” phrase.
But the next instant, he stopped walking, turned around and faced her, threw away his just lighted and so-many-puff-still-there cigarette, cupped her face with his tobacco smelling hands, looked deeply into her big shocked eyes, planted a tender kiss on her forehead and then said the 3 magical words, with the utmost feelings she ever saw in the eyes of any romantic hero of any romantic movie.
Her heart missed a beat… but she was happy about the missed beat. 
Filed under: Stories..., craps ... — chapters @ 6:23 PM
She has to clean the study room today. She does not know how else she is going to pass her time all alone as her husband had left for a official trip to Delhi since last 3 days. Today, in the evening he will be coming back. These 3 days, she did all the grocery shopping for the month, cleaned the garden, trimmed the plants, cleaned and rearranged the kitchen utensils, and many such works. She has got more than half of today and nothing else to do.
So, after she had her breakfast, she went to the study room and started unloading the books from the shelves. Once done, she started cleaning the shelves with a piece of cloth. Then she came to the pile of books. First she has to sort the books according to their categories, then wipe the dust off them one by one and then put them on the shelves again.
She sat down among the books and collected all the business magzines first and made a stack. Then she made a different stack of all the novels. Now she was deciding whether she should make 2 different stacks for fictions and non-fictions for the novels collection when her eyes caught a glimpse of a old book under others. She pulled it out.
Love Story By Erich Segal, She read the cover page… opened the first page. There it was, written in bold letters, her name and a date which was 7 years earlier. Her book… her first roamntic novel; and the last. She remebered the day she read it and how she cried.
It indeed had a sad ending but what a marvellous story…
She sighed while turning over the pages slowly and occasionally reading phrases from here and there. Suddenly something dropped form the book. She looked down. It was a dried and flattened rose, almost black, but must would have been a beautiful and big red flower sometime.
She hold it… smelt it… Smells like paper… She looked back at the pages, inbetween which it was kept. There are faint black marks describing the existence of the flower for all these years. She tried to rub the stain away with her finger. It did not go away… dead and dry fungi…
She looked at the rose again, remembered the fresh fragnance it had when he had given it to her… how red it was… how smooth its petals were and how happy she was. It was the first time that somebody had given her a flower. She wanted to steal the very moment of her life and seal it in her fist forever. Life was beautiful back then. The days that followed brought more and more flowers from him. She had almost cried with happiness the day he brought another of bunch the red roses, kneeled down in front her and asked if she would marry him. Her friends were so jealous of her for having such a dreamy proposal.
She was on cloud nine. She accepted his flowers and his love. They were considered as the best couple in the college campus. She being a sweet, sensitive and beautiful girl and he, being the sporty, dashing handsome guy… they were perfect with and for each other.
A lump formed in her throat when she thought of the day he went away to United States to persue his Masters. How she cried and how he promised that he would come back soon and they would be together again… how he planted a kiss on her soft lips before leaving in the airport and how he almost ran back to her to give her a red rose… Little did she know that, that was the last one.
Her eyes eluded her… she touched her eyes… they were full of tear… she was sad.
Why? Because he never came back again?? Or because he found somebody else and settled there and did not think its necessary to let her know the reason for abandoning her?
Whatever the reason was, but she was heartbroken. And she never let her family know her depression. Whenever there was anybody with her, she held back her tears, put on her brave face and smiled. She even smiled the day she heard about her wedding being fixed with Abhishek.
After all these years, the depression, the tears, the anguish everthing came back. The bitterness was all around her. It is not that she did not love Abhishek… she loved him, but it was always his memory which haunted her heart and she could never be the same passionate, romantic dreamy-eyed girl again.
She stood up and went to the balcony. A fresh gust of air brought the faint but sweet smell of the roses from her garden. She looked at the rose bushes. Like her, her husband Abhishek also loved gardening. He is a simple person. He loved his job and dedicatedly loved her. On their first anniversary there was no red rose, but a bunch of rose branches and they planted them together. Those bunches are bushes now and full of flowers… spreading thier fragnance every now and then.
She stood there teary eyed for another couple of minutes before she started smiling… She wiped her tears, rushed back to the study, brought out the dry rose and had a last look at it before throwing it away.
He came and brought a relationship that got dried up, lost all its colors, lost all its smell. Still she kept it with her all these years. It just blackened with each passing moment and stained her life, her present, and was about to stain her future.
Abhishek came and along with him brought a relationship which he himself nurtured, made its roots strong, shielded it from the bad weather and today it is blooming… just like the red roses…it has luxuriously colored her life with love, filled it with the sweet feeling of being needed and being cared.
Later in the evening, Abhishek returned from his trip. As soon as he opened the gate which led the way to their front garden before moving into the house, she almost ran to him and hugged him.
She told him how she missed him. And for the first time after their marriage, Abhishek found her smiling so heartily. He held her tightly in his arms and smiled.
Is she smelling like a rose today???
Filed under: Stories..., craps ... — chapters @ 11:04 AM
Everybody knew her to be lucky, as when she was around anybody, he/she could get any of his/her wishes come true. When she was there, nothing could go wrong.
Her father realised this the day she was born and he got a promotion.
Her mother realised this after she came into her and their financial problems started to vanish slowly but permanently.
Her brother realised this the day she tied the first Rakhi on his hand and he had his first pocket money.
Her best friend realised this the day she was with her and the man of her dreams proposed her.
Her husband realised this the day he saw her with her best friend for the first time and found the love of his life.
But she knew onething which nobody knew… she was a honest “Luck Ditributor”. She could only distribute luck to others and when it came to her, her lucky pot was always empty.
She knew this, but she actually realised this the day her husband put his hands around her neck and choked her to death just after proposing to the love of his life, her best friend.
Filed under: Stories... — chapters @ 12:17 PM
“Did you see that?”
“What???”
“That man waved at me… and smiled…”
“Which man??? Hey wait… have you gone mad?”
“But I saw him looking at me before he started waving… I swear.”
“That’s just not possible… May be he waved at somebody behind you.”
“Yeah… you are right… I am gone out of mind; Let’s get out of this place… Crowded places make me nervous.”
“Okay… Let’s go.”
And they strolled past the man who ,she thought, waved at her… now busy reading a book. She shook her head and moved away.
**************
When both of them finally moved out of the room, he looked up, closed the book he was pretending to read and smiled. He could not restrain himself from waving at a such a beauty. Since he had had the ability to see them, he had only seen dreadful ones. Her startled expression, seeing him waving at her, was funny… Did she got frightened!!! After all they are not used to getting a wave from a human.
“I must not frighten beautiful girls… err… beautiful ghosts again…“, he chuckled.
Filed under: Stories... — chapters @ 6:19 PM
Bunty is very upset. It is his 10th birthday and he won’t be inviting his school friends for a treat to his house. His mother is not so well today. And she cannot cook for so many guests. His mother is the world’s best cook, as per him and his friends. His friends just love to have a bite from his tiffin in school and they always look for some opportunity to go to his place, as they know, his mother would never let them go without giving them something very tasty to eat. His birthday is one of such opportunities for which his friends wait throughout the year. This year he had thought to call the new girl, Suruchi, too. He kind of started liking her and thought to befriend her by calling her over a party.
But all his plans went wrong. He could not hide his sadness, though he wanted to. His eyes told everything to Nandita, his mother. She and Sandeep, Bunty’s father, also wanted to celebrate their only son’s birthday as previous years. She had planned what to cook and statred collecting the ingredients from last 4/5 days. She even planned to bake a surprise vanilla and chocolate flavored marble cake, Bunty’s favorite. But since yesterday she was having headache and body ache. And in the night, the fever appeared… 104 degrees. She cannot step out of the bed. Sandeep has taken a day off for this sudden illness of her and called for the doctor.
When Bunty went to school that day with a tiffin of bread, butter and jam, Nandita cried. She would have never let her son take that for the lunch if she would have a little better. Sandeep pulled a chair beside the bed and sat. He put his hand on Nandita’s forehead and started patting lightly.
“Don’t worry… Everything will be alright…” Sandeep said.
“Bunty is so sad about cancelling the party, I could not even bake him a cake.“, Nandita’s voice chocked.
“You just take rest. The party won’t be cancelled. I will arrange everything.”
“Are you sure you can do it???“, there was a mixed expression on her face… surprised as well as relaxed.
“Yeah… obviously!! It is true that these days I don’t cook, but that does not mean that I cannot. If you are a great cook then it is because of me, don’t you remember that?“, he said with a chuckle.
“Hmmm… and thanks for that… remember those initial days of our marriage, how I hated cooking and you did it so passionately…”, she smiled, “Your passion slowly got cultivated in me… and became one of my passions.”
“And see… our son thinks that you are the greatest cook of the world, let him show the reality today… what’s say???”
“That would be the best gift for him.“, she was smiling ear to ear now.
*********************************
As Bunty came back from school, he got 2 pleasant surprises… His papa was cooking and his favorite vanilla and chocolate flavored marble cake. Nandita was feeling little better. She gave her son a warm hug and asked him to call up his friends and invite them for the party.
In the evening, Bunty’s friends came. Candles were blown out, cake was cut, happy-birth-day rhyme was sung. And everybody had the food with the same mesmerizing effect as they usually had at their place, just today there was a tasty tinge of a secret ingredient, which Sandeep never shared with Nandita.
