continued from part 1
It was about the midnight when my sleep was disturbed as I felt someone brushing the hand on my chest. It got me scared like hell as I woke up immediately, throwing the veil of white sheet off my face in a flash.
‘I am not able
to sleep. Can I talk to you?’ For my greatest surprise, it was the same crazy
girl from the middle bed of the ward, asking me for a talk in the middle of the
night.
‘What?’ I whispered
with bewilderment as I looked around to see if anyone else was seeing. Humiliation
was the last thing I was yearning for! Qayoom bhai was blessed with a death
like sleep, and all I could hear in the dreadful silence of the ward was the
snores that he was producing so effortlessly.
‘Please, I will
go after sometime.’ She pleaded again, looking at me with those big enigmatic
eyes of her.
‘Sister will go
mad if she sees us talking in this hour of the night’, I reasoned to her, not
able to work out myself whether that was a lead for a hesitant yes, or a
courteous no.
‘I will slip
under your bed sheet, and I’ll speak in low voice’, She said to me without any
perceptible change of expressions.
‘What?’ All the
residual fibers of sleep crawling leisurely across my disoriented brain
dissolved at once. I clearly did not know what to say to that.
‘Please’, she
arched her eyebrows just a wee bit as she requested me again.
‘Okay’, I was
clueless about what was going on, and what should be done in such a situation.
I conceded to her request nevertheless. I still don’t know what drove me to do
so.
She immediately
jumped on my bed from the left side which was towards the wall as she lay on
the bed beside me under the cover of what I called as a predecessor of coffin,
my white bed sheet! She was just far enough from me to manage not to touch me, but
close enough to make me run for a zone of comfort.
‘Are your
comfortable?’ She asked, lying in a side on position, and gazing straight into
my eyes. I wasn’t sure if she mocked me by saying that, but she didn’t look
like doing it.
‘I am
comfortable’, I answered firmly, trying my situational best to sound as genuine
as possible. I didn’t know whether she inquired about physical or mental
discomfort, but as far as I was concerned, ‘no’ should have been the answer to
both the questions. But for some remotely unknown reason, I did not say so.
‘What did you want to talk?’ I asked her gently.
‘What will you
do if you get to know that you will die in few days?’
‘What?’ She
surprised me yet again. Not that the question was alien to me, but it was just
that I didn’t expect her to ask this so forthrightly. ‘You are not going to
die. Are you?’ I said to her in order to avoid the question I had no answer
for.
‘Of course I am’,
she said with minimum fuss and absolutely no, what they call as, buildup!
‘What?’ She kept
on playing with my, what I believed as, sane mind. ‘How do you know?’
‘I heard doctors
speaking to each other.’
‘How long you
got?’ I was counting my life on my fingers myself, so that was always going to
be a relevant question as far as I was concerned. When you are dying, somehow,
you get better at Math’s!
‘Doctors aren’t
sure themselves, due to the complicated and unknown nature of my disease. One
of them proposes a six to eight months prediction’, she said in her usual
straight faced demeanor.
‘What about
others?’ I don’t know why I would ask that!
‘They don’t
guarantee a six days life with conviction.’
I was puzzled to
see the ease with which she spoke her mind, free from any shackles of fear.
‘Aren’t you scared?’ I asked her out of my own curiosity, which I suppose was
far less in magnitude than she was endowed with.
‘How do you get
scared?’ She asked wearing the expressions of wonder, the only ones she had.
‘Oh my God!’ I
heaved a deep breath. Predictability was the last thing one could associate
with her. She continued to shake me to the core, reminding me simultaneously that
I was talking to the furniture, with just one layer of expression painted on
its surface - curiosity, bordered by a bit of wonder. ‘You must be wary of
being dead’, I rephrased my question to her, with the hope that she will pick
the clue.
‘Oh, I am absolutely
looking forward to it’, she said. There was this childlike twinkle in those big
curious eyes of hers, and I would be lying if I say that I was not falling for
them.
‘What?’ She
shocked me with every single word she said. A beautiful girl sleeping beside
me, uttering the most inexplicable things of life with minimal set of expressions;
I couldn’t believe it was happening indeed.
‘What did you say you are looking forward to?’ I asked her yet again,
just in case I heard it wrong!
‘Death’, she was
as certain as the product she was talking about. The simplicity and ease with
which she said that turned my life upside down. I asked myself whether it was
the same thing that I feared every single moment of my life from the time I was
diagnosed. I begun to question my life, rather than my death as was the case
till now. Was I using the rest of my life to mourn my death? I didn’t have the
answers.
‘Why you look
forward to it?’ I asked her curiously, trying to search my own answers within
the range of one and a half expressions that she possessed. My uneasiness had
gone. She had jolted me with her simplicity, however pathologic it was.
‘Why?’ I asked
restlessly. I couldn’t wait to hear. It was like God had come to me Himself.
‘To know’, she
replied instantly. The two words she said seemed to be the goal of her life. It
was puzzling why there was this unmistakable certainty in the way she was
uncertain about things!
‘What is to know
about it?’ I could only wonder.
‘What happens
thereafter? I want to know that. I wonder if there is another life, may be of a
different kind, or I may get a chance to sit beside God, or to meet my Mom,
make friends with the angels, or I might be able to feel there. I keep
wondering when I think about the possibilities that seem to be endless.’
It was not what
she said per se, but the way that she said it struck me like a thunderbolt. It
was beyond doubt that she actually believed in those so called endless
possibilities. Though I didn’t believe in her, but looking into those big black
eyes of her, I couldn’t resist the temptation of wanting to believe in her.
There was something about her that was so mesmerizingly convincing.
‘Will you make
me fall in love?’ She said with the same gentle ease and candour, not even
caring to blink those big eyes.
‘What do you
mean?’ I was shocked! It was getting beyond my mind now, as it had begun to
churn my soul. It was strange, as real like a nightmare, and as unreal like a
dream! There was only one thing I was sure about, the more I talked to her, the
less I knew of her.
‘I have come to
know during my life time that love is the closest it can get to being blessed.
I want to feel the love before I die and get blessings from the God.’
‘How can I do
that?’ I wondered. ‘Doctors say you can’t feel anything.’
‘Please.’ She
placed her left hand on my shoulder as she tried to peer deep into my eyes.
There was such unadulterated innocence and honesty in her touch that it not
only stirred the length and breadth of my body with the whole array of its emotions,
but it thoroughly melted my heart with its omnipotent whirlwind, cleansing my
scars with its love, washing my soul with its exemplary warmth. It was strange
how the touch of someone who could not feel more than one and a half emotions
stormed me with a tornado of emotions.
And I just helplessly
gave in to her. That was the moment! A moment I realized that my life was no
longer mine, it belonged to her. I was touched by a power that could not be human.
It had to be something more powerful; may be love, for it felt no less than a
blessing.
‘Let me tell you
a story’, I said to her, turning my body to her side, caressing my hands
through her forehead. It did not feel like the first time to me. She felt so much
of my own, like it was just another night that I was talking to her. All the
doubts clouding my mind had been drenched away. I was never so sure about my
life, never so happy with myself, and death, it was no longer a threat to me.
I did not know
how I will ever make her feel my love. So I began my pursuit with the one and a
half feelings that she could feel, a world of curiosity mixed with a bit of
wonder. The night was not dark to me anymore, for I was shimmering with an
unknown yet definite brightness. I was ready for a journey that was so full of
life, beginning from this very moment. And I started telling her all the
interesting stories that I had ever heard, looking deep into her eyes as they
grew in wonder, appreciating the faintest of changes in expressions, brushing
my hand gently across her cheek, pampering her like a child of mine, wondering
if she could feel even a single drop of the ocean that had taken my life for
the ride of a lifetime.
She endured for
two or three of my stories before she went deep into the realm of sleep. I kept
watching her as she slept beside me, with her hand still placed firmly on my
shoulder, and my love for her grew only larger by the night, evoking hundreds
of smiles that continued to defy all the reasons I never cared to think about.
I gently placed
her on her bed before the first ray of light could strike the world. It was a
new life that was about to begin for me. So I lay on my bed with a content
smile, immersed in the swirling tempest of love, driving my way to my newly
found dream world with the first stroke of sunlight.
continue here...
The Curious Girl: Chapter 3
continue here...
The Curious Girl: Chapter 3
Categories:
Romantic,
Short Story
