Everyone is Special

It was all I could do to keep my eyelids from closing. It was after lunch and I was desperately trying to keep awake at my work desk. I guess I was doing a pretty good job of pretending to be awake and working as nobody actually came upto me with the noble intention of waking me up - that had happened in the past. A very chirpy and enthusiastic “Haiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” jolts me awake from my calm afternoon siesta. I’m quick to response like wise, a result of excellent reflexes and years of practice. It’s the girl from HR – the only department that I like a lot because they are the only department compared to which I seem to be actually working my butt off. Hey, common corporate knowledge – HR does no work.

I turn around and look at her and my eyes pop out. “My God! You’ve grown fat And how!” She pouts and looks cute doing it. “You too Brutus! Every one on the 1st floor is anyway being a bit too honest and straightforward about my weight. Some one called my extra luggage; some one called me a pig. No consideration what so ever that I am a girl. You don’t tell a girl that she has grown fat!” The female just looks plain adorable complaining so. She has just returned after a 10 day Durga puja vacation to Kolkatta and that she had a really good time was evident from the fact that now she could actually match me in size.

She was waiting for her friend to go for lunch and lounged around for a bit. As per courtesy I asked her about how she was, how the puja was and did she enjoy herself etc. Instead of the standard “I’m fine and every thing was Ok”, she opened up a bit to allow me a rare insight into her personality. Mind you, this was not a girl with whom I socialized too much, not that I did that with anybody else.

She went off track and started miming something. I was confused. What’s up with this girl? I knew, she was a bit off, but why had she suddenly gone into mute lane and why was she trying to look like one of those special newsreaders. If my generation can recollect, DD had (I don’t know if it still has) special afternoon news for those were audially challenged (deaf & dumb, for the uninitiated). I was as uninterested in these special new casts as I was in regular new. But the girl in front of me claimed to have been fascinated with it. She repeated a few actions and I asked her the meaning of a particular one – one that looked like she was screwing something like a light bulb on her head – she said it stood for Manmohan Singh. I burst out laughing, I don’t remember the last time I had laughed so hard and so loud and maybe even so deep from the heart. This girl had managed to make have a hearty laugh. She had to be special, she just had to be….

She told me that she had wanted to read my blog for quite some time. I noticed that she had a good sense of the English language and some how in those few short moments I felt there was more to her than what met the eye. I suggested that she start writing and share those with others. She said, she did write or rather she used to write. But those are too private to be shared. I understood. There are some things about me that scare even me, and so I can’t share them with myself let alone the world. But most of my other feelings are quite common, in the sense that every one feels them at one point or other. Sharing them does not embarrass me or make me feel vulnerable or ashamed – I get strong vibes that these are what I am supposed to feel being a part of the society.

She had a certain lost innocence in her, which I had not noticed till date. She told me that she had an ink pen that she loved and a red bound diary that she adored and may be she wrote when she did just for the love of the pen and the book. She wrote all there was to write in a period, which can be typically called the “teenage soul searching emotional turmoil” stage of your life. I know, because that is when I also felt the need to express myself through poems and attempted prose.
Her writings, those memoirs of the rebellious and confused period of her life, got lost in time…

She told me that she had freaked out in her college life. She had so many friends and they had done a lot of crazy stuff, the result of the age and the need to desperately break out of the social boundaries and to experiment – I guess. I drew a stark mental comparison to my own college life, there was not much of anything in it – I didn’t remember anything other than the fact that I was a total geek, in the classical sense of the word – first bench student, thick glasses, oiled hair, obnoxious dress sense and a barrel like figure. No friends, no fun, no nothing… She had met all those old friends this time she had been to Kolkotta. All those freaks with whom she had shared hours and hours of meaningless banter about anything and everything, she fondly remembered those times. She told me that surprisingly she could not have a decent conversation with them now, when she had met many of them nearly 3 – 4 years later. After the usual pleasantries, things just got stuck. She had nothing to ask and they had nothing to say. It was an awkward silence. I’m not too familiar with that feeling (simply because of the total lack of a huge number of friends), but I knew exactly what she meant. She will always have fond memories of those times and in her heart will be this childish yearn to relive those days but her mind will tell her that that it will not be. She had gone ahead in life; she had a new life now, new people, new friends and maybe a new persona altogether. She had moved on.

Listening to her, I realized that every one moves on. What at a particular period in time feels like the perfect idyllic life and time seem to be just a stepping stone in to the unknown future. Once the future closes on you, that too with lighting speed, mind you, you will look back at those very times and ponder upon them and smile fondly recollecting those times. But put in the very same situation today, you will feel totally out of place in your own past!!! I guess life is like a river. Though the mouth of the river, the point of origination is the purest and the best part of its existence, a river once it sprouts out from the mouth, never goes back, it just flows ahead – absorbing all that the world has to offer - good and bad, till it finally meets the ocean one day…..