Back on the blogging ways!With a short fictional article.
"It
was a quarter past noon, when the last & final announcement was made for
Mr. Singh, for the departing flight of Indigo Airlines. I was sitting on the
corner chair of the group of connected plastic chairs, placed right before the
plasma television of the domestic terminal of Indira Gandhi International
Airport. Considering the increase in the usage of the aerial route by the
standard Indian middle class, the dense population of passengers struck me by
no surprise. Albeit in this noisy place, sitting beside my best friend, my
mental presence did not corroborate with the physical counter-part. It was lost
in thoughts, or rather, in memories. It has been seven years since I first met
him in high school. It has been a joy ride with him through the junior college
& the four years of Engineering. It
has been too long a journey with him to just end it with a goodbye right then. What
else could have been done, I was flying to my home town where as he was going
to Mumbai to catch a connecting flight to the United States, where his family
relocated to recently. I haven’t exactly thought of that moment before, not
while filling the placement form, not while choosing the career path and not
even during our last discussion about our life ten years from then. For once, I
wasn’t my usual sense of pre-determined thoughts. For once, Ignorance wasn’t
bliss.
We weren’t talking to
each other, but instead, my soul was taking a nostalgic walk down my memory
lane. It was a slide show of happy moments going across my brain. The crazy
celebration of a cent percent score in high school maths, the thrilling
experience of double rafting through the biting cold water of Rishikesh, the
foolish prank we played on a guy who was trying to bully us, the ecstatic
occasion when we were awake well past midnight to watch our beloved football
clubs take on each other in a cup final, the eureka moment when we figured out
what went wrong in a project execution, the countless beaming smiles as a
result of instances when we completed each other’s sentences , the summer trip
spent on the sidelines of the west coast, the cheerful & elated celebration
after a well-fought win in a volleyball match, the strange yet hilarious dance
performance he put up on the fresher’s day. It was like smiles all along the
journey, the kind of which was then present on my face as a result of this
contemplation. This was when I realised, that he too was smiling. The same
smile to which he has held on to throughout his life. The same one which
demonstrates his ease in reading my mind. The same one which re-ensures my
memories.
This bitter farewell has
hardly kick started with a conversation when the boarding call for his flight
was made. May be words weren’t meant for those moments.
Unlike the previous
times, without any alacrity, I reluctantly rose, enacting him. With a low-toned
goodbye and a small hug, he just smiled and turned away. He picked up his cabin
bag and started making his move. When his stride-less walk was trying to gather
some pace, a solitary me was answering the self. If it was any other situation,
I would have gladly recollected the famous quote of Paulo Coelho, when someone leaves, it's because someone
else is about to arrive. But it wasn’t ordinary. It was one of those
moments which made me remember that growing up is all about facing the
inevitable with a heavy heart. After all, it was meant to happen. Amidst this
dense contemplation, I could figure his hand waiving at a distance. I couldn’t
help but think, was it a happy ending? This tech-savvy era wouldn't even
consider it an ending. But this rational explanation couldn’t reach the heart.
At the end, it was birds of a nest flowing in two opposite directions, letting
the destiny decide about the future."
