THREE
MONTH 1
“It was a very beautiful
and pleasant day to me.All my dreams seemed to become true.Mr.Sam shows me the
place where I will do my job as a part of his business.
It was a cabin at a
bungalow at the end of the district.He said,“This cabin is yours,this is your
office.And guess what?”
I
said-“what?”
-“This
bungalow is also yours.”
My
eyes started shining with joy and obviously greed,but most of all,it was the
joy of success,yes,the success of the dream that one day I would keep my mother
and sister happy,at least just for a moment.And my work?Well it was very
simple,every week an agent of the company delivered me a truck full of products
of the company,I had to store them in the storage room beneath my
bungalow.Then,after four weaks a truck from the company used to arrive and I
have to dispatch the stored products to the truck and it would dispatch those
to other some places. My job was to keep the necessary calculations, number of
incoming and outgoing products, their prices etcetera. I was a kind of
accountant of his business, so, he taught me how to use a calculator and calculate
things, as I was not educated enough due to poverty.
I brought my mother and Suniti to
the bungalow.I can’t forget the tears of joy in my mother’s eyes, the sweet
happy smile that I would die for to see on my sister’s lips, that smile which
was last seen when she was a little child, when she didn’t understand we are
below poverty line and the moment when I fought with life to get her admitted
to a school, the moment when she passed her 10th standard examination with a
brilliant result, but had to leave that smile when she understood she couldn’t
study further due to lack of money. But the smile was back again! I was so
happy to see my mother crying first time out of joy rather than out of sadness,
I was so happy because I became able to fill my mother’s empty stomach that sacrificed every single grain to reduce
the hunger of mine and my sister for a long years.
It was a remarkable day of my
life.
Mr.Sam
helped me a lot. He also made arrangements to help Suniti get admitted to a
higher secondary school. Finally, all my dreams were suddenly becoming true,
but I had never doubted about this sudden change because I was so happy,I was
able to deliver the joy of living a life to my old mother and my young sister
,the joy that they had never imagined to achieve before, the joy which we all
assumed impossible to achieve in our life ever! All our assumptions became
false, all the farfetched hopes had become reality! Why would I want to doubt
at that stage of my life?
There were some rules in my job,
set by Mr.Sam. The rules were-- first, I should not open the packs of the
products fetched by the company to me, second, I had no right to know where the
products came from and where would they go. All I knew was there were “electronic
goods, be careful” written on the packs. Some of packings had pictures of LCD
monitors on it, some had mouse, keyboard, CCTV, digital camera. I had no
permission to open those because those products came here in sealed packs and
if I would break those seals then it could not be accepted at the electronics
stores.
I
spent a month by doing the job. I got a healthy salary, Suniti started to going
school. My mother was just enjoying the life. Everything was so perfect.”
FOUR
Suniti
was returning from her school. It was a charming day and she had been going to
the school since last five days.
There was a college just beside the
school where Suniti was admitted. Both the school and the college had the same
time of ending the study hours. It was quiet natural that at the end of the day
there would be a huge line of college boys attempting to gain attentions of
those school girls, some of them even got commited to each other. Among those
wanna-be lover-boys , there was a boy who was always there beside the road
whenever Suniti crossed the road after the study hours ended. After two or
three days,his activity of standing regularly beside the road and noticing her
caught her eye. Suniti was very shy, she had a very limited friend circle in
school. She used to give a shy look to the boy during crossing the road and
quickly returned it back before the boy could make out that she is giving him a
little attention.
But that day there was an exception. Suniti
was returning from her school in a regular manner and she stood beside the road
to wait for the traffic to be cleared so that she could cross the road safely.
She always did this on her way home after the school. She crossed the road safely
and stood on the other side, now, there was an exception -- she stood and after
a terrible effort she looked at the boy and she watched him for a very long
time. He had black thick hair, a good-looking face, fair skin, a fit and
muscular body (probably due to gym work and regular exercise), a very handsome
guy. For the first time,she had noticed someone with such an intense attention
and felt attracted. It need not to be mentioned that during all the time she
was noticing him, the boy noticed her back, the beauty that no boy could avoid
noticing, the addiction that no boy could avoid feeling.
It was about a couple of minutes that
had passed, Suniti was still staring at him. A beauty like her, enthralled by
someone else--the boy couldn’t stop himself from approaching her. He crossed
the road, came towards her,
-“Hi”
-“H-hi”
,a reply with hesitation from Suniti.
-“I
am Ravi, Ravi Kumar.”
-“Oh,
I am Suniti Ray.”
-”What
are you studying now?”
-“I
am studying arts, I am at class 11 now.”
-“That’s
great, I am studying in the first year, do you live near?”
-“Yes,
it’s a 30 minutes’ walk from here”, she pointed her finger towards the
direction.
-“Oh
that’s great, that’s also my way to return home, let me accompany you, if you
don’t mind please.
-“Yeah
sure”, she replied.
They started to walk the road
together.
MONTH 2
“A
month passed. In one month, four trucks full of goods came to me, I kept those
and necessary calculations, and at the end of the month I gave some of the
goods to another truck. So, at the end of the month, there were three trucks
full of goods at the store and one truck full of goods returned, it was easy to
calculate.
Every day of mine had the same
routine. I woke up late, then I had tea, after that, keeping calculations,
eating lunch, getting a siesta, an evening walk. My sister used to return at
the afternoon, so after the evening walk, I returned home, gossipped with her
and helped her study.Sometimes the
routine at noon changed because of arrival of goods and the routine after
dinner when goods had to be returned. Yes, goods were supplied at noon, after 3
pm and the truck arriving after four weeks would receive goods after 10 pm. This
was my routine during those greatest days of joy.
Now,I am talking about a day on
which an exception occurred. I returned from my evening walk hoping to see my
sister, but I found her to be absent. I checked her room -- no she was not
there. I asked mother if she had returned home, she replied in negative. I
worried about my only sister.
She returned very late in the
evening. I asked her gently, controlling my anger at her irregularity, “what
happened, Sunita?”
-“Nothing
much, vaiya”
-“Nothing
much? You returned home so late, and you say it’s nothing much?”
-“I
am so sorry that I’ve returned home so late, actually there were assignments to
be submitted, so I, along with some of my friends, were doing them. It took so
much time to prepare and complete the work totally that I could not follow the
time, I am so sorry vaiya! Please forgive me, please, please, please.”
I could not get angry after
such a sweet, childish apology. My anger subsided and I smiled. I could never
be angry with her actions, because she was everything to me, the reason I took
the job, the cause of my wish to live on, the cause of my pursuit of happiness --
all were she and I loved her so much.
Well, I thought such an exception
was possible; after all it was because of her school that she was late. So, the
exception ended there, actually, I had thought so.
But I was wrong.
After that day I shifted my walking
route to the road which is on her way home. It was around 5 pm, I was walking
along the road enjoying the fresh air coming from the woods beside the road, the
sky was cloudy too, as a whole, it was a weather to enjoy the soothing feeling of wind and nature. But that
wonderful feeling did not continue long. Soon it was transformed into an itchiness
in my mind, because what I saw afterwards was not soothing enough. There were
two persons walking towards me, a boy and a girl. I didn’t know the boy, but
the girl ,well, the girl was my sister!
I was just stunned to see them
together, obviously I would not be stunned if it was a school boy, but he was
not wearing a school dress and he didn’t look like a school boy at all. So, here
is my sister with an unknown boy who is not from her school, there were enough
reasons to me to concerned. But I couldn’t stop them, I didn’t want to. As soon
as I saw them, I hid myself in the woods beside the road and kept my eyes on
them. They were so happy and busy gossipping, they both looked shy whenever
they were making an eye contact and sometimes they were giggling. It was very
clear to me to what the two teenagers were up to. I left them, I did not want
to run behind them like a spy. I decided to return home.
That day she returned home late, again, like
the previous day. I asked the same question she replied as she did before. I
was ready to get the same answer, that’s why I had asked her the same question.
I did not know what to say, it shocked me that my sister had started to lie. It
hurt me so much,the person for whose happiness I was struggling with my life
had started to lie to me. This was very, very unexpected.
That night, during studying, I told her,
“Suniti,you are growing up now, you will have to interact with strangers, you
have to struggle to live, struggle with the nature of those people, their actions
unto you. I only want to say, don’t trust a stranger so easily, whatever his or
her behaviour is, it may be polite, very good, very bad, but you will believe
them only when you have reason to, when you know them fully. Also, keep in mind
one more word -- never disobey this in any situation.” I became silent for a
while.
-“What
is it vaiya?”
I
looked at her, smiled with pain in my heart and said,
-“Don’t
betray or lie to dear ones who have always thought for you and live their lives
just for you.”
I
planted an affectionate kiss on her forehead,
-“Goodnight
vaiya”, she said.
I
looked back at her, smiled again and said,
-“Goodnight
sweetheart.” ”
