“ Hello Nadeem, I have really missed you”. Her greetings took me back to the day I had first set my eyes on her. It was our first day in a well known management institute in western India. The sitting plan was put up outside for the red bricked, high ceiling semi circular lecture hall. The student officers chatted excitedly amongst themselves as they waited for the first Linear Programming lecture to start.
She wore a pink salwar kameez and an attitude, long legs balanced on high heels, no make up, shoulder length jet black hair, honey colour complexion, intoxicating brown eyes, about 30 years. “Hello Sir, how are you?’ she asked as she slid next to me. I had to fight the enticing perfume and presence to concentrate on the lecture.
A few lectures past, I realized two things – she was a tad deficient in her upper storey but made up for it with loads of attitude and chutzpah. I was more than happy to help her with the occasional answers in return for a company and a dimpled smile. Men will always be boys and 500km away from home, staying in a hostel; men will be boys with loads of testosterone!
The moot question hammering my intellect was – can a person have more than one soul mate? Are human instincts and happiness subservient to man made rules, to be sacrificed on the altar of “acceptable behaviour”? Do we come across friends, confidants, loved ones and enemies from our previous births in our present lives? How else can one explain instant like or hate when we run across certain persons? Soulmates are fellow travelers from previous lives or maybe part of our soul which has transmigrated to different physical forms, now trying to get together again……
As students we, armed forces officers, were acutely conscious of the fact that we were the chosen ones to study in the hallowed precincts of the institution. The red stoned building with its sprawling lawns had an old world charm; there was feeling of freedom and expectation in the air. The faculty and alumni of the institution boasted of names from the who-is-who of the academic and management world. Two weeks into the course, we had our first get together with the faculty in the local army mess.
A typical army party on the lawns besides swimming pool, local DJ playing popular numbers. She wore a light blue crepe sari and was letting her hair loose on the dance floor – a figurine full of mischief, masti and oomph. The full moon cast its luminescence on her; the songs talked of her beauty, the music made her come alive.
On the way back to the hostel, I composed my first ode to her and like a love smitten juvenile, emailed the poem to her on the intranet. I didn’t give a damn about rules anymore. I was in love