A page from the memoir…- Short Story Friends
Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com
Reading one of our old diaries after a long time, can be a pleasurable experience, at least for some. Sujatha was holding one of her business trip diaries, just to recollect all those places she had been to during her work. She has two other diaries too, one exclusively on personal matters and the other on the trips made with family. She avoided reading them as she thought it would bring lot of nostalgia with tints of sadness. Who wants blue devils? No one… Sujatha was no different.
She had been working as the manager of a renowned multinational company in India, for many years. It has been three years since she took her break from the work. At first, it was a temporary decision and action, but later it became a permanent one. Going on toiling for decades will take all your good spirits, no matter how much you are paid. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with her husband Raj and daughter Neena, who was happily married to a doctor and a mom of a two year old kid. Now Sujatha knows what exactly is a happy and peaceful life.
She opened the diary. It was more or less intact. She just flipped through the pages and her eyes caught a particular page, a page without any title or date. Usually when she writes her diaries, the date and place will be put at the top, and especially, it being a business trip diary, she wondered why she hadn’t. She checked the details of the last and the next trips, and found this particular trip had been made either in the first or second week of December, 2007.
Still she didn’t get any idea about that trip and doubted whether her memory was already fading. Her eyes now meet the top of that particular page.
“If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this…..”
Landing at Maya Bay I feel that the word paradise doesn’t give this place justice. It is a thousand times fabulous than I ever imagined. I was skeptical about what to see and do in a bay, but now completely taken aback by the scenic beauty of the place. Coming in Phuket city of Thailand, I had finally ended up in a heaven. The feeling is so gratifying!
The surprise part is that this happens during an official tour. I was asked to represent the company in a meeting of partners which had been planned in one of those grand hotels of Phuket city. Fortunately or unfortunately, the meeting has been called off due to some technical problems. So me and Sharmi were in a dilemma, whether we should stay or go back. The director of our company was kind enough to permit us to return as per the prefixed programme, so nearly two days we can spend here( Flight is scheduled tomorrow night!); otherwise it would have been a hectic shuttling! Thus, this day becomes our unexpected holiday, for me and Sharmi.
Sujatha remembered, “Sharmila aka Sharmi had been more of a friend to me than just an assistant. She was a reliable woman and a perfectionist, smart and attractive, yet single and strong…”
9.30 PM
(Sujatha thought. “Oh, I had recorded the time here, so the first part was written while I had been in the bay and the following part later that night!”)
It was her idea that we should get out of the hotel and visit some places. I was not interested though, tired by the usual non-stop work, meetings and journeys. I had wished to curl in bed and have a good sleep. But when Sharmi arranged everything for this trip, I had to follow her, like a kid. But her choice, was really awesome!
I am at loss of words to describe that place I visited today…Maya Bay!! Usually Sharmi stays close to me during business trips. But today, she was walking alone enjoying the cool breeze. She might have been enjoying the bliss of her solitude.
The place hasn’t become commercial yet. There were no big crowds, but sitting there under the shade of an umbrella, I could see visitors from all parts of the world. Most of them were young, I think I was the oldest. Those youngsters were excited about the boat trip which they were going to start within no time. I looked the whole bay, the blue sky, the cyan green water between the dark huge rocks. Enchanting indeed! I wish I could go there again someday with Raj!! Does age control romance? I will say “NO”!
But today something else caught my thoughts….
“Munni – Minni…..aao idhar”! Someone was calling from the back hut, intended for the visitors. Hearing Hindi speakers there, I turned back, took a look and felt happy to see a couple, with the typical North Indian looks. Indians everywhere! And my eyes then searched Munni –Minni. I saw two small girls, in similar swim suits, though they were not going to swim, sitting close to the water and enjoying something, may be a shell or stone. They exchanged some small articles, looked amused and were giggling. By one more harsh call from behind, they got up and ran back to their parents and the whole family moved to another point. Seeing those kids sitting there, and having a nice company, my childhood memories flashed before me… Thengasi memories! Long forgotten memories!
“Yes….” Sujatha lived in her old memories….. “I had been born and brought up there, in Thengasi, Tamil Nadu. After my fifteenth year, we had to relocate to Delhi as my appa got a transfer. Delhi had taken up the rest of my schooling and job, in fact conquered my life and my memories as well. That’s how I had come to forget Thenkasi!”
Thenkasi was a beautiful place, of course in a different way from Maya Bay. A place with mountains, vast green rice fields, small rivers and everything there had been spectacular for my childhood eyes. I had met my first best friend there, Meenakshi, the neighbour girl of my age. We were always together to school, to play, to roam and what not! Partners in all crimes for many years! She was tanned, but was beautiful with her big, attractive eyes and was a clever kid too. How many evenings we had walked through those rice fields dancing in the breeze, how many vacations we had spent together in that vast orchard, how many times we had sat on those river banks dipping our legs in water, sharing our dreams and wishes. I still can’t forget how miserably we both had cried during our parting. At that time I had hated my father’s job and Delhi. For I had thought I am going to lose my happy childhood there in Thenkasi. It was true too!
The busy metro cities, as all know, always had a power to make people busy too, make them forget the old, to send someone’s past to the oblivion. I even had wondered, coming from almost a village like place, how quickly I had got along with everything in Delhi, from schooling to the way of life.
Meenakshi used to send me letters and I used to reply. She was continuing her studies there itself, but in all letters she wrote how terribly she missed me. This communication, in course of time, reduced and slowly stopped. For many letters I didn’t bother even to reply. The last letter from her had been a short one, informing about her marriage. I was twenty then, so she also might have been. I had felt why her family should send her away in marriage at that early age. We couldn’t attend the marriage, but my parents had sent a gift for her. Even I didn’t select one for her! See, how far Delhi had changed me! I wrote a letter to her many months after that, for which I never got a reply. That was my last letter to her.
I don’t know why people including me behave like this. Forget close relations….forget to communicate……forget to empathise….forget to understand…..finally, forget to live! All just exist and feel dignified to say they are “too busy” to do these things! Someday they definitely WILL understand they were wrong, and then it would be a very late revelation! Neither she nor I communicated thereafter, reasons … nothing but “mistakes” mostly mine! I didn’t do anything to keep in touch actually.
When I had entered my job, and got engaged to Raj, I was not on earth, but in some other world! I had never even thought about informing her about all those developments in my life. And one day, I came to know from my parents that Meenakshi was no more in this world, she died during her first delivery. An unexplainable feeling of grief, guilt and something else, made me silent for few hours. But, I don’t think I had even cried then.. Rock-hearted me! I had been shocked for a while, but when Raj had called, everything was forgotten forever, until they resurfaced today. She was my best friend, even then, I never made an attempt to call her, to write to her, or to enquire about her, I did nothing….I was busy!!
I was so selfish and contented in my new world of happiness. I am sure I never had a friend so innocent and close like her later in my life, though I had many people around me always. Because people like befriending successful people. How many years it had taken for me to remember my little, old friend Meenakshi!
I see my diary pages getting damp……….yes, I am crying!
“Sujaji, anything wrong?” It was Sharmi. I didn’t know when she came near me.
“Oh nothing, the dust in the room irritates my eyes. It is ok”.
Sharmi might have understood that my reply was an escape, there was no dust in that clean luxury hotel room. She might have taken it as something personal. And, she is definitely not that type of person who intrudes into others’ private matters. So giving a sigh, she left the room, leaving me alone.
Today, Maya Bay and those two little girls reminded me of my childhood days, my long lost bosom friend and made me shed a few tears, which I could never shed on her departure from this world!
Thoughts make me burst into tears … Memories ridicule me!
“How many more close people, how many more really precious memories have I missed forever?”
Sujatha placed the diary on her lap and closed her eyes. She could feel Thenkasi calling her in the form of Meenakshi !
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