Fri, 29 Mar, 2024

Shadow of the Past: Part 1 Fateful Encounter

By Navaraj Kharel

I stretched my hands towards my glass, wore it and stood up from the bed. As I woke up from the bed, I thanked god for the beautiful yesterday and prayed for the well being of me and my beloved ones in the coming days. My wife served me tea. I asked her, "Where is Nirjala"?  She is sleeping replied Natasha. "Oh! kids nowadays sleep entire day,” I muttered.  I went upstairs to wake her up. "Let’s go to jogging,” I asked her. She agreed with difficulty and we went jogging. Since I had already crossed my sixties, I could hardly run. After some minutes, I got tired and thought of resting on the bench in the park. "Grandpa, you cannot even run for a few minutes and you wanted to go jogging,” said Nirjala. “In your age, I used to run 2 miles every day but now the time has come that my soul will soon leave my body.” “You never speak like that again!” said my granddaughter. By the side of our bench, there was a couple who had just got married. I looked at them and smiled and they smiled back. “Grandpa, did you ever fall in love?” “Yes, many times with your grandma. “I am not asking about her; you never had a girlfriend?” “Oh yeah, but I was in love with a girl. However, I never had the guts to share my feelings with her. I was pursuing my Masters in Business Administration in India. When I saw her for the first time, my eyes bugged out and I got a feeling like that of a cartoon character with my eyes springing out. She had the cutest smile I had ever seen. She was wearing white shirt and dark black jeans. She had her thick long hair draped over her shoulder. She was with her other friend but all were shorter than her which made her stand out. I tried to document everything about her in my mind at that moment, jot down everything about her and made a poem out of it. And her eyes were.......... I was overwhelmed when she happened to be my classmate. She had transferred to the university where I was studying. I was looking at her all the time. She caught me staring her! I tried to act casual and started looking at everyone else as if I had been profiling everyone else except her. Till that date, I had not talked with her. I tried but could not make it. The next day, I was staring at my own reflection on laptop screen trying to figure out angles at which I could see her. I kept noting her little ways, every little facial expressions of her, vivacious and random. Actually, anything she did….not just her smile ….If I could, I would document it all. The way she did everything made her stand out. I used to wonder, ‘Does she even know that she is so damn special to me. Will she….’ ………...to be continued