While five buses were set blazing on the
arterial Eastern Metropolitan Bypass road, Riha stood frozen at the kitchen
door of the small hut in the slums nearby. On getting the news sometimes back,
she had come running to Harish’s house, but she hadn’t been able to walk up to
the lady sitting near the fire. While there was commotion outside, her heart
was apathetic to it and all because of the lady who sat stoic looking at the
fire burning in front of her. Her eyes! They were ablaze; the ‘chullah’ seemed
alive not because of the charcoal but for the gaze. There was not a single drop
of tear in it, and it didn’t move a minuscule in spite of all the humdrum
outside. Riha so badly wanted to walk up to her, but she couldn’t fathom why
her thumping heart had suddenly frozen since the moment she has seen Renu.
While she stood at the door, thoughts started
filling her mind! It began infiltrating her present with the moments of
togetherness, the moments when her carefree lover Harish used to make comments
on her ‘ugly-beauty”.
Harish! Her life. Unlike her, he was 'Std.
X fail' and had not taken any initiative of studying since the day their school
teacher had caught them red-handed playing some nasty games in the garden. Riha
was a shameless girl, and in spite of all the insults, she had neither stopped
loving her childhood romance nor had she stopped going to school. Coming from
suburbs, she was one of the rarest species, who had completed her Std XII and
was working as a nurse at a Government hospital.
On the other hand, her dear man used to
ride an auto. Riha’s shift timings were mostly at wee hours, and that was also
their time for romance. They used to meet an hour before her shift timing and
again spend an hour together post her shift got over. She mostly preferred the
night shifts as foreplay in the auto was their best sport and the wee hours
suited it.
Harish The fatherless child. He had lost
his father at a nascent stage, and his mother was his world. Renu used to work
as a cook in a ‘dhaba’ near the EM Bypass, and it seemed nothing else mattered
to her except her son. No! His father was not dead, but he had left them for
some other lady and lived in the suburb nearby. He used to hit his mother often
so the day he left them, they were more relieved than grief-stricken and
moreover it wasn’t anything new happening in their ‘chawl.’ Harish and Renu shared
a lovely bond, and fortunately for her, Renu had accepted her as her
prospective daughter in law, without any hassle. They often used to go out
together, and she was a regular guest at their house. Why were they not married
yet? Even Riha didn’t know; might be because of the whimsical dreams of Harish.
Riha smiled thinking about them; his dreams.
Harish! The dream boy. He had big plans. He
had started as earning at an early age, driving an auto for someone else, but
he had dreams to be a chauffeur of a Hummer! He was a car lover, and though he
had not given his ‘matrics’ exams, he had an incredible friendliness with cars.
He used to say that had already taken the first step towards his dream as he
already owned an auto when he had asked for Riha’s hands in marriage, from her
parents. When he was not driving the auto or spending time with Riha or his
other friends, he worked in a garage and was even considered as the best
mechanic there. Thanks to his scope of work, Riha had got the chance to ride an
i10 one day and a Swift Desire the other day; just yesterday they had to take
the Swift Desire to the owner’s house, post repairing for delivery. 0During
these deliveries, Harish used to take her with him, and just a few blocks away
from the house he used to drop her near some tea stall. Riha used to wait there
for Harish and then they used to walk back home, chatting, talking about the
past, and planning for the future. Others might think it to be impossible, but
they had also walked all the way from Jadavpur to Chingrighata. When with
Harish, time flew. Even after ten years, they never seemed to grow bored with
each other.
Memories… memories… memories! They knew no
bounding and had no end!
Her thoughts were suddenly disrupted with a
loud sound from somewhere, and she jolted back to the present. So harsh the
today was that she had to hold the door for balance. Where was Harish? Had he
not gone to purchase gifts for his friend’s marriage? She was at the hospital
when she heard about the accident because of which the slum dwellers had set 5
buses on fire. She was waiting for him to come and was cursing him for being
late when she had heard about the two guys being hit by a bus post breaking the
signal.
As she was trying hard to bind the threads
of her thoughts, she saw four men entering from the main door of the hut with a
mass wrapped in a white sheet. The man leading them, shouted something like,”
Mashi, we have killed those scoundrels!” Even before she could fathom what was
happening, she thought she saw a smirk on Renu’s lips, and with tear laden
eyes, she looked up at Riya to only utter those few words, before turning
toward the dead body of Harish,
“Go
away you girl; you have no place in this house anymore.”
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