Category: Stories and Memories

It was 9:15 AM and I was hungry, having skipped dinner the previous night. I stepped into Haldiram’s to pick up a loaf of bread for breakfast and nearly drowned in nostalgia looking at the fresh Hot Samosa’s being laid into the trays at the counter.

We had morning college, 7.30 AM and during winter its darn early in Nagpur to be in the college at 7.30 -but still a bunch of us were very regular – we would attend first two classes, get thoroughly bored and hungry by 9.30 .

Our respite was a small chai-samosa thela in front of the college run by a “Kaku” and “Kaka” (a middle aged women who we would call kaku and her husband). Alpana insisted on calling her Maushi though showing her true kokonast breed 😉

So four of us I, Pattu, Alpana and Shishir would invariably find ourselves gorging steaming hot samosa’s -straight out of the kadahai sipping ginger tea. Alpana in her trademark style would ask for more mirche and then say the mirch is too hot. We would tease her for riding her bicycle on the footpath instead of the road and generally pull each others leg eating atleast four samosa’s each…

Samosa!! I use to love them -I still do, but I rarely get to eat them now 🙁

She was a charming girl, always smiling, always had something nice to say, she was my best friend.

I love him dad, he has asked me to marry… …. On her brief visit home she spoke to her father about the boy who she was friends with in the town she studied. She was inclined towards the proposal, the boy had always made her feel special, he made her feel like a woman he deeply cared for her . Her father was not sure of her choice, the boy belonged to a different community, different religion, a background totally different from theirs. Somewhere in her heart she too had the same fears but the fears were far less and took a back seat in comparison to the happiness she was seeing ahead.

Her dad finally agreed to meet the boy and told the boy very confidently, I know my daughter. He said to the daughter , its your decision, its your life you have to take the step forward if you want to marry him and bear all responsibilities of the action.

It was a good meeting, the boy was happy, the girl went back to her hometown back promising to return in a month.

Weeks passed, I saw him every day, we would sit and talk for hours about life about her about the lives they will live, it wasn’t easy for him to talk to his own dad about the marriage, but he had done that, he was ecstatic.

The month passed away, she did not come, her letters came periodically but they were non committal she was now between yes and no.

31st December 1990 was the cut off date if she did not come by then or at least give a firm commitment, he had said he will forget her… the wait was getting to be too much.

She did not come, a letter arrived saying it is best that they do not marry each other she further said that her father stands by his words that she can marry if she wants to, but it is her decision and that she has decided not to get married to him.

He was heartbroken. he woke up sad everyday, mornings are the toughest, he once told me.

Days went by, the boy missed her he felt he did not deserve this. All he had given was love, all his love and all he wanted in return was love, just love. Its so unfair to be left alone like this.

Years passed, she married the boy who was her father’s junior in office.

14 years is a long time I remember it all as if it happened only yesterday.

Most of all I remember the meeting her father had with the boy I was not there but I know what transpired in great details.

Had her father insisted and resisted his daughter marrying the boy, I am sure she would have put up a fight did everything she could to marry him. They would have been together if there was an opposition from her family.

Things changed when she was allowed to take her own decision and bear the consequences.

What happened to him after she left him is another story.

You are free and responsible for your own destiny. Trust in God and you are doomed, I have never found him when I needed him the most.

Sisyphus pushed the rock up hill everytime, only to find it tumbling back to its original place. The night had no end and he just had one task, to keep it pushing up till it came tumbling down, crushing him, only to push it up all over again.

I once tried to push an obstructive rock down the hill only to find that the rock takes me down with itself, so much for all that work. It would have been better if I just went past the rock, change the course and have the wonderful view again.

Not that I won’t find my burdens again. They will spring up at unexpected places, in absurd ways at un-wanting times Happiness and absurdness indeed go hand in hand. The struggle to remain happy in itself is so absurd, the moment you stop struggling, happiness follows you. The moment you stop desiring, all your desires get fulfilled, but does one really want that?

Men and women struggle and desire not for the end result, but for the road it takes to reach the goal. The moment the goal is achieved, its futile.

This universe without its creator seems so impossibly sterile to the them, that they wont even think of alternate ways. They keep on carrying the burden uphill and downhill, every time getting squashed by the rock in the process and still refusing to look beyond the rock.

Think for yourself Sisyphus, and you will find an alternate world without the rock, without the burden and without the absurdity of state of mind.