ek kalam ki sookhi syaahi

bade saalon pehle ek pyaari si ladki meri zindagi mein aaee thi...i was happily playing about...going to school...when she moved in next door...One find day..just like that...

Just passed out of college, all confident, a job with a top firm, a big bungalow rented on her own salary...

Though our first encounter was quite the anti climax...a smart assy comment she made...a bet i took up...changing her wild bush of a lawn into better than my own mom's in less than three months...

And in those three months we became pals...buddies...chuddy buddies...She used to walk into our home at any time, from the morning pooja to the dinner...un announced like it was her only...and I could do stay overs at her place any day...we would stay up late to watch movies together...we saw the whole of Hannibal Lecter series in one night...

Heck we even used to go on dates together...we had so much fun...she knew the bouncers at this pub so I was the only kid of my age who managed to get an entry into a disc...

That was 8th class...she was 21...

One day she asked me what will you do when you grow up...i looked up from my computer and told her i'm gonna be an engineer...build autos...better than dad does...

She smiled...no i think she laughed...she ruffled her hand through my hair...and said...i think you'll make a fine gardner...

that was 10th class...

One day she introduced me to this guy, and by the look in his eyes I knew she had found her man. They were still dating when I left for college to Pune.

She used to write to me every week, i preferred letters to phone, i've never liked phones. She married him, I finally met her family. She was looking regal that day.

I was working in Pune those days

Then one day the good news, she was pregnant. I knew that was what she had wanted the most in her life. I had been her kid for many years and now I was glad she was getting to do, getting to be what she had always wanted to be...a mom.

And then the call, there's always this call that you get once in your life that turn your world upside down. She told me, somehow you know I expected that call, I had been expecting that call since the day I first saw her in my house, standing in that blue salwaar kameez with small white floral print in her cute little white sandals...I knew that day that she would go away, that she didn't belong to this earth...

I took the next flight out back to Delhi. For the next month he and I took care of her. She delivered a fine little baby on 3rd March. Funnily she handed her over to me, that little bundle of joy. On the night of 3rd she went back to where she had come from.

He, me and the little her took off to his farmhouse near Chandigarh. He never remarried, I never married...when you've been touched by perfection, you don't somehow require anything more...ever. Our little bundle of joy is now a fin little lass of 5, as peppy and mischevious as her mom.

I'm still a software engineer but only by hobby...three landscape artist awards later, one wonders, why was god so kind on us to pay a visit in person