These days, News Papers hardly carry news of hope and life in the morning to your living room. As I opened the front page of the paper in anticipation of another appalling information, I stumbled upon the news of bail being granted by the High Court to the killer of a young lady doctor at Assam Medical College, Dibrugarh. The gruesome murder rocked Assam for quite some time and the killer happened to be a disgruntled colleague whose marriage proposal she turned down.
While the news of Dr. Sarita’s death
kept me dismayed, I had a message least expected. The sender
of the message informed me of being a regular reader of whatever mundane
staff I write in my blog with the sole complaint that in the last two years I
have missed something important.
“I too was an important part of your life at some point of time which
your blog continues to miss”, She wrote with her usual effervescence.
The message brought back memories of those days when I was just past the
age of 21 and joined Steel Authority of India Limited at Durgapur as a
Management Trainee. We met literally on the road in one of those boisterous
evenings at Durgapur, the evenings which we could spare in abundance over a cup
of hot coffee and kebab or a chicken roll at Durgapur Steel
Market. We were not bold enough like today’s young couples. Some
phone calls, short meetings here and there and sharing of Archies Cards and
chocolates kept the relationship going. Was it love or something else I didn’t
know as I kept on asking myself? But I enjoyed talking to her and her
simplicity, sensitivity and intelligence kept her spaced out from the others.
One evening to scare her, I rang her up in to inform that I was coming to
her home . Till then, she didn’t have the courage to tell
her parents about me. While she laughed away my words as prank, I rode straight
to her home and knocked at the door pretending to enquire about some “
Mr.Bagchi”. Scared to death, she prayed the moments to pass on safely as I had
water and chatted comfortably with her mother . I was from Assam and
Auntie was pleased to hear that I belonged to the land of Ma Kamakhya.
While I was recuperating at the Hospital and fighting one of the
toughest battles of my life, she often managed time to come from Jadavpur to the hospital
skipping classes, with a bag full of drawing sheets, T-Square and what not at her back. She prayed for my recovery and holding my hand,
showed her unstinted support. Yet, when my father met her in my Hospital
chamber, a so called good boy from a middle class family, I couldn’t
muster over enough courage to introduce her as my friend. I knew, my
timidity did hurt her, but she never vented her feelings for once to unsettle
me at the hospital bed.
As it normally happens in most such stories of youth, we too broke up
rather in an unconventional way. There was guilt, self inflicted pain and many
sleepless nights pondering at both sides. Years latter, I think, the parting
was mutually beneficial and even better for her. While we parted and
moved along, my friend has done well in life as a professional and a loving
wife. Today, she manages works for a large MNC and more importantly lives life
with dignity. These days, we don’t have much correspondence except
exchanging birthday greetings. Perhaps like me, today she laughs, remembering
those days of naïve immaturity, yet, with no hard feelings, I know I have a
well wisher in her and so she has one in me.
When my two sons grow up to read this blog, they should know that their
father was a normal human being like them ,
prone to slip-up. As he trudged along, like them, he did all the mischievous
acts as a child, wanted to desperately fall in love in his early youth
and was as dreamy as them as a young man. Like others, their father erred
too, not once but many times, but he was no hypocrite either to hush them up
under the veil of fake righteousness.
The murderer of Dr. Sarita had a brilliant academic career too. But,
perhaps more than the human anatomy and fat mark sheets, which he was regular
at getting, someone needed to tell him that it is important to achieve whatever
you desire in life, but more important is to learn to respect the time you were
at relationship with someone, even if it was one way traffic.
You can contact Kamaljit at kamaljitmedhi1975@gmail.com
