Story-1
She was waiting for him. All these days, all these months, all these years in the same place at the same time. But all she sees is the emptiness in the path that has awaited for him.
“Gular Central Park, 5:30 pm” he had sent a telegraph.
She had nodded to herself reading it again and again, thinking of all the possibilities to get away from this cruel society that was pulling them apart in the name of religion differences.
Here she is, still waiting at the entrance of a big residential area that once was Gular central park, still hoping to see her lost love. Every day from the past 24 years she comes here exactly at 5:25pm and waits for him still believing he would come for her, not realizing that he had already moved on in life and at present is enjoying a lovely evening coffee with his rich wife somewhere in the other part of the world.
story-2
That was a busy day. Mukhesh had a tight schedule yet he never liked to miss a morning breakfast with his wife. He came down from his study room still tying his tie around his neck. Kalpana –his wife was arranging the dishes on dining table. He looked at her proudly. She saw him and immediately a warm smile was all over her face. The same smile she has every time she caught him looking at her passionately.
“It’s your favourite, south Indian style idli –vada” she said.
“You told you have an important meeting in the morning, you carry on, I will wash the dishes before I leave” he said.
“Have I ever missed breakfast and dinner with you?” she asked as a matter of truth.
It’s been more than 2 decades. He remembers everything that happened in their journey of love. The humiliations, insults, hatredness his own family and friends had shown when he decided to marry an uneducated and poor girl –Kalpana from the village where he was first appointed as a doctor after his college.
Mukhesh’s parents were the typical foreign returned people for whom standards mattered the most. He knew how much Kalpana had to suffer under his own nose just because she could not read or write. He loved her innocence and pure heart but that didn’t stop his parents and siblings for whom English was much closer than their mother tongue to pick on her every time they got a chance.
And today, she is someone with a special place in their family. The same people who once looked down on her, are praising her. She is seen as an ideal woman.
The journey as an uneducated 18 year old girl from a nameless remote village to the double degree, PhD doctorate holder was indeed a tough path. From learning A B C D to publishing papers in the international journals, from learning simple sentences in English to giving a presentation in the international conference was something she herself was unaware of. But with her Mukhesh besides, she didn’t realise how much hard it actually was.
Mukhesh still remembers the days when she traced on the letters he wrote on slate, the days when English really looked like a crazy clueless puzzle to himself when it came to teach her. He still smiles at the memory of his wife forming funny sentences trying to speak in English. He had wondered when she had learnt them all quickly. For Mukhesh, she was his little kid.
Kalpana was not extremely talented but she was extremely hard working. To her Mukhesh was everything- A father, mentor, guide, soulmate, and her first child. She never wanted to put down her husband in front of anyone. She studied day and night through being a loving housewife to being a caring mother.
“I love you” he said as he dropped her in front of the National Research Center where she now works as a senior research scholar. She smiled with her sparkling eyes that said everything that words could never do.
–END–
