Nandini, a Love Story

   Chapter-6

Strange Meeting

That day the bus was crowdy. I managed to get a seat at the end row after some struggles. The front seats were all occupied and were humming with voices, whispers, and suppressed or exuberant chuckles of passengers, exchanging gossip and rumours. The appeal of this whispering campaign never lost its validity in our society from root to peak. I think the reason is we all are story lovers and we mix those stories in our everyday mundane lives scooping from our surroundings.

Some passengers were struggling valiantly to make their opinions heard above the hubbub. And some were pretending to be in deep sleep. If you scrutinized minutely, there you could have discerned two types of sleepers. Type one feigned to sleep, especially sitting beside ladies. Their pretensions could easily be caught up when they try to snatch a touch of their co-passengers. Type two was seriously dozing persons. They were the night owls of Netflix, I think. Again there were some stony-faced statues, plugging headphones in both ears. I thought their auditory cortex was equally working in both directions- inside the pinna or outside of it. They are the best projections of the “epitome of stoicism”. Anyway, sitting in the last row gave me these kinds of opportunities and I enjoyed it all. As I was a nascent occupier in the great grand sea of daily passengers, none pay heed to me except some curious eyes.

Nandini, a love story

When I was just to reach my

s in so much hurry it would take me away to some unknown place where I never descended before.

From my childhood, I had a phobia. I did not know the term defining such ‘phobia’. I was always scared to board any train. It seemed to me that the absence of any conductor, or helper, within my limited boundary of vision, would cause great damage by throwing me to an unknown country from where I could not be rescued even if I yelled at the highest pitch of my voice. So I yelled now-

“Please, let me get down from the bus. This is my stop.”

“Hey, let Madam off the bus, don’t take her away”, a voice surged to me from the deep delves of Delphi. I searched for the voice and I met those eyes- magnetic, yet so calm. A frisson of strong passion overwhelmed my pores. I wished to have a detailed look at him but I had to disembark.

The whole day the voice echoed in my ears, “Hey let Madam off the bus” a drawled pronunciation, too vulnerable to fascinate me with its lingering effect. It was just funny. I was eager to share it with Dipesh but when he called me at night I babbled out everything- what I had eaten, what I wore, my colour of bindi, my fabric of dupatta, except about the man. It was so trifle to share or it was all about me. Maybe I did not want to share my foolish feelings and became a victim of his blistering teasing.

To be continued…

munu.ruku2020

Hey, I am Munmun, the phoenix fabulist who wants to tell you stories. I love to read stories and I love to weave stories. I feel life is an amalgamation of multiple stories, colourful threads, and threads of pain, pleasure, hope, and hopelessness. We just need to pick those hues and arrange them, knitting them with our own emotions and perception. So let’s celebrate the stories of life.