Ek lamha, lautaa hai bechaaraa...

A poet and philosopher once mused, “Let go off the object of your love. If it comes back to you, it was always yours, if it doesn’t, it never was yours!” The poet, however, refrained from mentioning the time. When, when will it come back? How long will it take? Once the sun goes down, or after spending hundred moonlit nights of longing and pain or when the darkest hour of the night gives way to the first ray of light? When, when will it return?

Life and love travel on parallel paths, Ruhaani had learnt. Life had taken her hands sternly and led her way to a different path. The wounds she had secured for herself lay deep inside and not even a scar was visible.

How long would have she waited for that wandering bird?

Should she open the doors to a new ray of the sun or keep the darkness as a veil over her? She was posed with difficult choices to make, neither of them being even one bit easy.

She got no chance to answer or choose, though. In three years after her wanderer had left, she crossed the seas and built a new nest on a new branch.
Mrs Ruhaani Naqvi. She lived her life in Adelaide, was a doting mother and was Wasim’s love, life and wife.

She had crossed the seas, having taken away from the busy city of Lucknow, leaving behind the letters, photograph and memory of Amar, her wanderer, as she had named her.

But after thirty years, she returned. To Lucknow, to her home land. Her childhood memories played before her eyes and her youth still lingered around the courtyard of the old house. The laughter, the tears, the sound of the wedding band, all lived through, even though the moments had gone away!

And her love? Her wanderer? She had no clue. But she had one desire. The return to this familiar land had triggered familiar waves of craving in her heart. As if, a drop of rain had fallen on a parched piece of land and the little seeds inside sprouted to life.

She did not know why she planned a visit to that Old Boys’ Hostel, Room no 13 in the Engineering College. Just once. She warned herself, “Just Once.”

Thankfully the hostel was closed for the Summer Vacation. Ruhaani negotiated with the Security Officer and got a permission to visit Room No 13, for half an hour. And thus she went ahead.

As her feet treaded that path, moments hidden in oblivion thirty years ago, sprung into life, one by one. She touched a Vinca plant. The lost moments were still lying there. Picking up the lost moments, she went into the room

And there she froze for eternity. “Wanderer..!” she muttered, “Yes, here you sat and looked surprised when one day I walked into your room, demanding why you had just stopped sending me the letters. But I could not question you. Just looking at you I would always forget what I had in mind. So deep would be my trance that I could not even remember your face once I returned home. Why did that happen to me? But that day, I spent an hour with you. Thanks to the rain outside, I had to wait longer before bidding you good bye.”

Ruhaani sat for sometime in the neatly made bed. It did not belong to any student now and that is why she was allowed to make a visit to this room. Co-incidence? Or did fate know that she would return?

Ruhaani could almost see Amar in the yellow T-shirt and Black denim, sitting beside her. She found that the hours, days and years had ticked away but the moments were still scattered across the room, on Amar’s table, on Amar’s floor, on her fingers, on her hair. She could almost see the music system speaker which the budding engineer had made out of two earthen-pitchers.

She had never met Amar after that day. That was the day when the harsh reality was finally condensed in his dew laden words. That was the day when Amar said that he never thought of building a nest; he was all ready to fly over lanes, meadows and oceans, all alone.

Nest! Ruhaani had, but built a glass castle in her dreams. Amar’s words had broken her trance and with it broke the glass castle into thousand pieces and she stood on them, her feet bruised, bleeding and hurt. She had herself treaded on her own dreams.
Her spell was broken by the ring of her mobile phone. She suddenly found it too loud. Only half aware still, Ruhani picked up the phone. Aashif was on the line. She had planned this rendezvous with her lost moments, taking Aashif into confidence. Her friend, confidant, angel, Aashif had dropped her at the hostel gate before proceeding towards the railway station to pick up Wasim.

“Yes Aashif,” Ruhaani, now back to her full consciousness, said.
“Ammi, come to the gate, I have arrived. Abbu and I are waiting for you at the car.”
And Ruhaani proceeded homewards, with her family.



Anindita Baidya
Photographs: from the internet