Lost long ago

Towards the end of the journey, the landscape becomes sketchy…distinguishing things from their shadows becomes difficult. The horizon seems to have come within your reach. Inside you, there is complete silence…as if someone has, at last, resigned to something imminent.

The letters on this newspaper appear to me as a thick continuous line with corrugated contours. To read them, I need to wear my glasses. But the photographs are somewhat vaguely visible, even without glasses. I amuse myself by looking at them. Some of the faces remind me of persons whom I have known, loved, and lost somewhere on the way. Sometimes they take you to the bygone shores...and you see their smiles again; hear their voices.

For instance, this little photograph in today’s newspaper takes me somewhere in the distant past.

It is a university campus. The corridors are strident with the laughter and merriment of young women and men. They are the students. I see a dark young man with a sad face. Painfully thin in appearance, extremely withdrawn in his disposition. He was, I remember, mostly lonely. And I see her. Shobha a vibrant, lively little girl, always animated, always talking…who laughed like the jingling of anklets…cried like the skies of June. They liked each other a lot.

On three or four occasions perhaps, they had shared some moments of togetherness under the trees in the campus. Moments that had made the world feel like paradise.

“What will be your…I mean our son’s name?” She asked, nudging him playfully.

“He must become a poet…” He remarked meditatively.

“So let’s name him Rabindranath?” She retorted.

“Great!” He said, “And if it is a girl?”

“Mrinalini…or Meenakumari…she must become a famous dancer or actress!”

But the days of enchantment ended rather suddenly.

“I guess I am no one special to you.” There was anger in the young man’s voice, pain on his face, and desperation in his eyes. The girl stared back, obviously hurt, anguished, and upset. Youth has its own ways with men and women. Not he. Not she. Neither compromised. And they parted.

Then there were those days of guilt, dejection, and distress. She used to visit him often in difficult dreams.

She held a suitcase in her hands. Here eyes were swollen and red with crying.
“I am going” she sobbed “Why did you hurt me?”
“No!” he pleaded, “Don’t leave me!”

She wore a beautiful skirt of a strange kind. “Look, I have become a butterfly! You love this butterfly, don’t you?” She smiled mischievously. He ran after the butterfly. But the dream vanished. The butterfly disappeared.

Gradually the dreams became less frequent. Timereplaced those wounds with deeper and more severe ones. A great healer indeed, time is! And soon after, Shobha stopped visiting me altogether.


Yet, strangely enough, I dreamt her the night before, after fifty long years.

I was taking an examination. My seat was by a window. There was pin-drop silence in the hall. The paper was difficult and I was feeling uneasy. Suddenly Shobha appeared at the window, she was standing outside. “My exam is over”, she whispered, “There are certain things I did not understand. You might know the answers. I am waiting for you…at the gates.”

The dream ended abruptly and when I woke up, only a gust of cold wind swept past me, escaping into the eternal freedom outside the window.

When I wear my glasses, I can clearly see the photograph in this newspaper. The face of a vibrant, lively little girl…she laughed like the jingling of anklets and cried like the skies of June. And I read the small note under the photograph:

Obituary:

Second day of demise. Shobha Ranganathan. Sorrowing family.
Daughters: Mrinalini, Meenakumari. Grandson: Rabindranath.

V K Rajan