Revelations of an Alter Ego

REVEALATIONS OF 'AN' ALTEREGO...

6p.m , she was back from college. A black harem and green polo necked shirt she was sitting on the sand mound at the backyard. Her hair was wet....and so were her eyes. She was looking fresh after her bath. She smelt of sweet lime. Her pale pink skin glistening with tear drops. Her eyes moistened with the memories of the past two years. She wasn't crying she said. I sat by her side. None of us spoke. But I could very well interpret her silence. I may not have been her Decoder, but I was a part of her since the day she was born.

College for her held nothing new in store. Each day, it was the same. The 'incident' hadn't changed anything in her life as she put it. But I could feel the void that he had left. I realized it every second of the day that even though things were "fine" and "okay", her heart was a little bit broken. Just a bit! But she was coping up with the scenario. She still frequented her regular haunts---the canteen, the rotary, the library. She still ate "phuchkas" with her friends and egged the "phuchkawala" for some extra "jhaal".... "kaku aaro jhaal dao na!!!" . But every time she did something within her routine, somewhere it used to remind her of him. Every time she gulped a "phuchka" she looked up to see if he was around. The college gate was a place that he frequented every evening. At times when she ordered for coffee at the canteen, she could listen to a voice say, " I love coffee, I wish I could have a coffee maker in my room. Barite thakle Ma roj shokale ekta boro mug-e kore coffee die jay. I feel like a king with the coffee in my hand in my bed without having to budge a finger to get it." Coffee didn't taste the same anymore. Sometimes she would cancel the order and pay 6 bucks just like that. She used to love Nirvana. She still does , though she barely listens to them now. I remember that day, both of them were speaking of chocolates, when she started singing "man who sold the world". He joined in unison. But halfway through, his phone fell into a bucket of water. That was the last of his N70. But that wasn't the last of their "high" conversation. He managed a phone to talk to her and they continued to sing from where they had left. It was always like this. Every time they made up after a fight, they took off from where they had left.

Today was just another day for her---she was missing him . But she soothed those slightly ripped wounds by saying, "remember this time will pass". This was also taught by him. What she really missed, was his face. It had been a month since she had seen her "carrot nosed jerk". Why did she call him a jerk? He had this funny way of bugging her by saying "we meet to create memories and part to preserve them". What used to irk her the most was, she could never think about life minus him. But toady though he was there, he wasn't , and nothing could change that. She DIDN'T want to change that. She was gazing outside, down the bars from the 3rd floor corridor, her eyes riveted to a tall lanky figure wearing a bluish t-shirt and casual black trousers quite contrary to his shirt-jeans-converse look. A small beard trimmed to the chip, he wasn't looking pale. There was a sign of fatigue in his face, though smiling. A number of black rubber bangles on his left wrist, he dint wear his watch. She loved his watch. His hairline was receding , perhaps a direct result of continuous intake of spasmoproxivon , nitrosonium-10 and dendrite. Yeah, he is a bit of a doper, but not an addict according to her. Suddenly she hid herself behind the adjacent wall. She could predict him. I saw him look up as if scanning each and every corridor.