•10:52 PM
She used to tuck it away
underneath her pillow every night, like a talisman that would guard her wishful
dreams, like some treasure that she needed to guard from the night. With three miniature
diamonds sitting like a crest on its top, the ring emitted brilliance of
burning dusk that in evening light wore a look of some shining liquid fire. The
glitter on her ring finger would often compete with the glow on her smiling
face, the diamond ring at times winning for attention. This seemed the only
piece of adornment she would ever prefer over her plain clothes, those stood out
as elegant and neat as her thoughts.
One evening that fall, four years
ago, right after she had passed college and university was still a spring away, the family went out to dine. The Chinese restaurant was on the top floor
of this mall in the food court, with the ground and first floors spread out
with fashion and designer outlets, a couple of exquisite jewelers shops near
the right bend towards the escalator. It was when dinner had been done with, and
the mall lights were reflecting over glazed walls in tangled shadows of
competing neon, she stopped by the jewelers showcase captivated by the sparkles
in tiny boxes spread over velvet on glass shelves. Closing her hands over eyebrows, narrowing eyes as if peering over a distant star that shone many lightyears afar, towards a ring that perched like an empress over a velvety box
on its glass pedestal. As she was transfixed there it took a lot of calling
from Mom to make her move, but even then she kept on glancing back at the sparkle
that called her attraction. In the brilliance of an aura held in that velvety
box, she has seen her reflections. Dad, who shared a deep bond with his daughter,
noticed the glimmer in her eyes when she was almost stuck in a silent conversation
with that ring. She had never been a demanding kid and he knew she would never
press him for this, but he had also seen a longing in her eyes near the
showcase window. Next evening, after having come back from office, he slipped
in her hand a tiny velvety box that opened up to a starry effulgence. That
night she tried hard to sleep, but slumber evaded her over a seemingly endless
night. She tried the ring on all her fingers, by the edges of her thumb too, and
then would slip it back to her ring finger, sometimes putting it back in the box,
and then tucking it away in the drawer only to reopen it again. From that day she wore it almost always. Her
Dad passed away two years later, leaving a deep void within her. There is nothing
that can comfort such a loss; no words can lighten this anguish. In the
following years whenever she felt like confiding into someone, she would
whisper to the ring and let her heart unburden of its entire affliction.
University itself was a challenging
puzzle, not with demands of being studious; she always passed in the top slot,
but with aimlessness staring at the end of her course. Most courses in the
university try to fit you in pre defined exams, where a routine syllabi is
drilled and parrot repeated and then put to the ‘who among you can reproduce the parroted routine from memory’
tests. Universities, I found, don’t really prepare you for the practical
challenges of life, the anticipation of the unseen and the unanticipated. It
was here that one spring afternoon during an interactive session on ‘social
networks and political renaissance’ that she saw him for the first time.
Defending the right of political and social resistance, he always advocated the
rise of the individual from societies to allow the change within. This
had been his maiden visit to the university event, an invitation he had accepted
with a lot of reluctance knowing that the state had always been monitoring him. Standing by the doorway to a packed room, she never figured when the talk
had ended and even before she realized, he had already disappeared among small
groups of dispersed discussions. Like mad she scrambled, pushed through the jumbled
crowd where faces were hidden by evening shadows, and rushed towards the notice
board that had announced the event. Grasping, panting as she scrutinized the
board for his details; there it was his first name only and nothing more. ‘What identity is a first name only?’ she
asked herself. For the next two weeks she
had nothing more than his first name. He left the very next day of the event
that had been his first ever visit to this place. It was after two weeks that
she stumbled upon one of his write-ups on a web magazine, which she read and re-read
umpteen times, unable to hide the joy of moving beyond his first name. And it
took him more than a month to reply to her mail, that too in a one liner ending
with ‘Regards’. This frost continued
over next winter, she searching for all his work, keeping an eye for every
word he wrote and he replying rarely to her mails.
Early spring a thaw came, the first
conversation almost happened over
phone when he was on his second visit to her city. She somehow had found out
about his visit, called his hotel room, and on her first call could not muster
the courage to talk, froze in silence for a minute and dropped the line. Then
she looked at her ring pleadingly, muttered a prayer and mustered courage;
called and this time they talked for a few moments that seemed like an infinity
for her. The ring held a charm for her wishes; she looked up and figured someone
was praying in sync with her. She had held the ring during all trials and
tribulations of the past years and it always seemed to comfort her, some kind
of unseen force.
The freeze having broken they
talked often, expressing the unhidden, laughing away the unavoidable and at
times confiding their worst fears. Something between them was connecting, even
while they had never met. Back home she would often grab her younger sister to endlessly
talk about him, her oft repeated blabber of his praise. The younger sibling would
smile at her repertoire; she unaware of the bored audience that sat tamed
yawning.
The next fall, for almost a week
there was no reply from him, all her mails or attempted calls going into a blank
vortex of sorts. Uneasiness bore a discomfiture that sunk like a rock in her heart;
her frown was visible to everyone at home. She would talk in briefs and then withdraw
to reclusive silences that wore a sulk. For some days, like a hermetic, she
withdrew to her room, often walking to her window, partially opening the curtains and standing there for hours in wait, looking out blank. On a Saturday
afternoon the younger sister, wanting to break her seclusion, somehow managed
to plead her for an evening out. Venturing aimless they drifted to a familiar
mall with the Chinese restaurant on the top floor. Among pacing shoppers with
heavy hands and screaming kids the noises of a weekend seemed incomprehensible
to her. As if all these voices meant nothing in her vacuum of silence, walking
insulated from all this din. The
turbulence within her was no match for the babble outside.
Then she stopped by the right
bend towards the escalator, trying to see his image in reflections of a glittering
showcase, while behind her descended interlaced chaotic shadows over drab
glazed walls. The jewelers showcase seemed empty today; all its velvet spread
barren like autumn fields plucked of its yield. A voice was heard from behind “May you see within yourself what you want to
see in this glass. May he see your longing in himself”. A bedraggled old
man in unkempt hair, with dry ash grey skin and a lean skinny figure concealed
under layers of clothes, in seemingly satisfied eyes, extended his cap begging
for a pittance. “May he see your longing in himself” he repeated. She again looked
at the showcase window where now the velvet seemed to shine even in its
emptiness, having given its treasures in yore for somebody’s smiles. And then
she imagined figures in glass reflections, of an old man, of that young man, of
her own self smiling. She drew her hand to the ring finger, extracted her
diamond ring and dropped it in the beggars cap. The younger sibling clasped her
own mouth in surprise, turned towards her and even before she could turn back
in a fraction of second to stop this giveaway, the beggar was nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile jumbled
faceless shadows continued to pour over drab glazed walls of an autumn evening.
~S~
