Forgetting someone

Earlier this evening, the boy came out of his apartment with a black outfit, accompanied by hurried footsteps, which was his trademark, and gave him a scent of busy and ignorant feeling about the rest of the world… somewhat contradicting to the truth. An unhappy soul. A face wanting to blend into the crowd. And an everlasting need to be happy, when the rest of the world finds their way to be the same. 

The least possible way for the crowd to see him is taken, as decided previously. A walk through the lake. And then the infamous road.

A girl walks in front of him. She walks with her father. The hurried footsteps somewhat slows down. And then a few muttering within his mind.

“This couldn’t be her, is it?”

Four years had passed. It was really a long time.

He stopped, and looked at her, walking with her father. They went towards their home, took a turn and then started walking towards him. It was the moment he had to decide whether to talk to her or not, after a long period.  

He looked at her face for the last time. And then walked back. As he started walking towards his colony, he consoled himself with his own reasons. He had a lot of them. And one thing he knew for sure, that it could be the last time he was going to see her in this lifetime, for a change in fate was going to give her a chance to study abroad. A lifetime of longing, he thought was not out of the equation. 

But he did not talk. And he took an oath, if and when he does, one day, meet this girl, he was going to make things clear. Once and for all. Maybe someday, when the tables will be turned, in his favour. 

On the way back home, under the railway bridge, he saw a boy, naked, and begging for money. A boy only nine of ten years old. A time of Durga Puja, and in the midst of thousands of people walking under that rail bridge, no one had even a second to look at him, or even noticing that it was the same boy that begs every evening at the same place. So the Puja is not different for certain people, he thought, as he crossed the boy.

But only this time, the busy footsteps were decelerated.

Another soul was burning. And that made two of them.

He went back. Brought a note out of his wallet, and put it in the hands of the naked boy. The boy astonished, looked at the note and then tried to look at the person’s face, who was gone again, with his hassled steps, blending into the crowd. And by the time the boy got himself together and realised he has got enough money for his dinner, the possessor of the hassled steps was a long distance away, smiling in his mind.

“The fact that she was never mine, and the truth that she will never be, can do a world of pain to me…but it seems someone behind the game has set some fine accord with people so that they get benefited by poor souls like us.” 

Within a span of an hour, the boy had met the love of his life, chose not to talk to her, and helped a poor boy begging for money to have something to eat for that night. 

And then he started realising that happiness cannot be found outside. It is only when you know you have it.