“Yaar, Marvel Avengers movies are indeed the best. Hahaha! Thor is my favorite!”, shared Sooraj, shaking his spectacles. He walked with young Alok and Mihir.
Alok chuckled, nodding along, “I loved the movie too. Black Panther the Wakanda is releasing next month. Let's not miss it, guys! Woohoo!” He extended his palms for both his friends standing on either side to put a hi-fi in.
But, Mihir didn’t acknowledge it. He was, instead, busy looking at the circular floors and the big fat white chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling. Alok and Sooraj shrugged at each other.
“Central”, announced the red serial lights put up at the building’s entrance. As they almost neared the exit steps, Alok patted Mihir’s shoulders. He enquired,” Yaar, why aren’t you uttering a single word?”
Sooraj too added, “We finally managed to meet out for the movie after two weeks of dilemma. You were more excited than Alok and me at the beginning. Didn’t you like the movie?”
“Sorry guys. I caused the delay due to my mom’s operation”, said Alok.
Sooraj shook his head. He clarified, “Yaar, I didn’t mean it like that. Nothing about that!” He put his hands around Alok’s shoulders. As the three friends descended, he enquired, “How is aunty now?”
May it be a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a couple of years, or even throughout one's life, relishing the most beautiful feeling on Earth-the love, it still matters.
While most couples are almost near the silver jubilee of their wedding anniversary, Alok and Nisha are just about to begin their love life!
Love at any age is love. Why not a middle-aged love story?!
“Yeah, mom is feeling better now. She got discharged yesterday. She will be back to work soon”, replied Alok.
“That's glad to hear. Thank god, yaar!”, thanked Sooraj, joining his hands and looking up at the sky. Mihir nodded.
“I am annoyed because of you, Alok”, Mihir spoke out, pointing his index finger at his friend. The latter shrugged. “You shouldn’t have lost your marks. How could Tanya outsmart you for once?”, asked he, frowning and kicking the empty can near his foot.
Alok chuckled as Sooraj stood, shaking his box-shaped spectacles again. “Guys, forget about marks and grades. Focus on acquiring knowledge. Leave this business of me beating her or her beating me after every internal. Our main goal of joining college, the campus placements, is fast approaching. Let's gear up for it rather than letting these minuscule matters affect us…“
“Yaar , I understand. But, Ranveer and Tanya are the ones who have always been initiating the discussions of our competitions. They aren’t as mature as you. I, as your good friend, never wanna see you lose any time at any cost”, Mihir interrupted.
Sooraj nodded at him. He emphasized, “He is right. Did you already forget how they teased you this morning? Ranveer claimed that the semester’s gold medal will be Tanya’s…”
“Why do you guys bet? Don’t bet hereon”, suggested Alok, sitting on the bench put outside the chaat inn.
“They don’t leave even if we do. That's the problem, yaar. Why don’t you get it?”, Mihir raised the point, as he sat on the opposite bench.
“Guys, the best thing to do is to ignore their comments. The more we react, the more will they continue. Heated arguments will never reach an endpoint”, concluded Alok.
Sooraj returned with three plates of bhel puri. No sooner had they begun snacking that Alok’s eyes went over an old beggar with a bent spine walking slowly with a long, thin stick, brown in color. The old man’s cheeks were covered with a dense white beard extending to his chest. He wore a black sack on his back.
He smiled at the five-hundred rupee note that suddenly showed up on his opened right fist. He raised his head up slowly. He smiled at junior Alok standing in front of him. He lifted his right hand having a red holy thread tied at the wrist.
“Ayushmaanbhava!(Live healthy)”, he blessed Alok. At once, scenes of Alok's younger self smiling and running in a hall, flashed in his mind. Alok shrank his eyes and raised his eyebrows as the beggar’s greeting echoed within him, over and over, for the next couple of moments. He also saw a man of around thirty chasing him. He could only recollect himself turning back and giggling. “Pappa!Pappa!”, were the only words the little boy uttered every time he turned back to face the gentleman who chased him.
“Beta, the next few days will be a little hard for you”, forecasted the man in a yellow dhoti. “It will be a ridiculous phase of your life when the heap of questions striking your mind will bring their answers along. Hahaha!”
As he walked away, Alok caught the edges of his forehead with both hands. He had a near experience of spondylitis while he recollected the little boy of his mind, sitting on his father’s lap. The kid giggled and danced as his dad tickled him without a break. He hugged and kissed his child.
“Ayushmanbhava!”, he whispered, in his son’s ears, at which the latter giggled more. “Paapaaa!”, exclaimed the boy, waving at his father riding the motorcycle away opposite a footpath.
“Why can’t I recollect the man’s face?”, stressed he, seeing only the man’s hands hugging him, in his memories. “Is the boy of my memory myself? I can correlate him to one of my photos while I was adopted from the orphanage. I was new to the orphanage back then…”
Sooraj and Mihir made him sit back on the bench as he stood with closed eyes and was lost in his dark childhood days. He stood like a statue on the footpath. They shook him and patted his cheeks as he was busy rolling his eyeballs hither and thither. “Was the man in the scenes that just flashed, my father? It means that I apparently had a lovely father before being admitted to the orphanage far before Nisha mamma adopted me”, he wondered.
As his friends borrowed a Bisleri bottle and filled his mouth, he swallowed his tears along with water, grieving, “Paapa, why did you ditch me in an orphanage? Weren’t you there to look after me? Why orphanage when I have you? Where are you, dad?” He sobbed secretly after nodding at his friends who began leaving.
“I will investigate my broken pasts. I will find you, dad, not because I’m longing for your affection but to kill you with questions. What damn situation made you leave your own son in a damn orphanage? Why did you play with your son when you never loved him? Why, paapa?”
With the tiny yellow timepiece striking half past eleven, Dr.Alok, in an ash T-shirt and white Bermuda, was busy, drinking from the black flask. He placed his water bottle on his study illuminated by the yellow light from the table lamp in the top left corner.
“What’s tomorrow’s lecture for 5B?”, thought he, smiling through his round spectacles, at the laptop’s screen. “Ooo! Database Normalization, I see.” He stretched his hands up as he leaned back on his rolling chair. He yawned. He looked up at the ceiling.
“Sexy! Just 1NF,2NF,3NF, BCNF that's all right in normalization?”, he attempted to recollect, shrinking his eyes and rolling his eyeballs hither and thither. He leaned forward and grabbed a fat textbook with a black cover having DBMS written in bold yellow below which lay the foreign author’s name in italics fashion. He flipped its pages.
“Should I discuss the fourth normal form as well?”, he doubted, at which he frowned at his laptop again. “No need. Sexy! It's not in the syllabus. Why to bother then?!”, he exclaimed. “Anyways, students ought to know. So, let me share a point and leave it to them for self-study.”
He stopped at a page. He let his fingers skim through it until he found ‘3.1’ at the end of the page. “Normalization and its forms”, said it, in a bold fat formal print. “Let me go through a few examples. I think I can manage the lecture then”, grumbled he, in his meek and hesitant voice.
“Aye! Is it normalization?”, repeated he. Before he sat to prepare for his class, he chuckled. He blushed, moving the curtains of the window beside him. He postured his back straight and folded his hands. “Nisha medam, how can I forget this topic? It's linked with our love.” He closed the textbook. “Sexy! Let me call my Nishoo medam!”, he exclaimed, grabbing his smartphone.
On the other hand, Nisha was busy dozing off on her bed. Her mobile sang the popular titanic song. She, in a red nightgown, let her hands on the adjacent desk. Her left palm was too tired to grab her mobile. “Urgh! Work at this hour?!”, she blabbered, sitting up on the bed. She let out her right palm too, found the phone, at last, and answered the call.
“Daisy, shall we please meet tomorrow and fix the code? I’m very tired!”, said she, yawning and pressing the button on the lamp’s base.
“Sexy! My dear daisy medam, who is this Daisy?”, chuckled Dr.Alok.
“Hey! What’s wrong with you, buddy? Why are you imitating my Alok saar, my husband-to-be?”, asked Nisha, yawning again and chuckling along.
Alok saar burst out a round of laughter. He revealed, “Medam, it's I, Dr.Alok Sharma, your saar, your beloved himself. Sexy! In which world are you, medam?”
“Aye! I appreciate your mimicry skills, buddy. But, not now. Bye!”, replied she, massaging her plait on the front and extending to her hip. As she removed the phone from her ear, Alok exclaimed for her to stop.
“What?! Why are you disturbing me late at this hour?”, she squealed.
“Medam, don’t you check the caller ID before picking up? It's indeed me, your Alok saar!”, clarified he. Nisha finally opened her eyes and bulged them as she read out ‘Dr.Alok’ in bold white on the light blue screen.
“Oh, saar!”, she exclaimed. They shared a round of laughter.
“Absent-minded Nisha medam!”, he complimented, sighing aloud. She raised her eyebrows. She screamed at the receiver, “Naughty Alok saar!!!”
He chuckled, moving his phone a little away from his ears. They blushed and laughed on their sides.
“Do you remember zip-lip?”, enquired Dr.Alok.
Who is Alok Verma? Will Nisha's foster son ever recollect the story behind his younger self?
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