Heart-broken

She had been almost certain that it was Vipin. And now when he turned to speak to the conductor, Mili became sure. Vipin was seated in the first row of the minibus! It was quite likely that he had seen Mili while she was boarding the bus. Mili could see only the back of his head and his side face from where she sat. She had never thought about him during the last five years, but seeing him now brought back memories of the wonderful days that they had had together. She felt a strong yearning to talk to him. Their common interests and the closeness that they shared those days had earned them the title ‘Made for each other’. But fate had other things in store for them.

Those days Mili’s father had been desperately on the lookout for a ‘good groom’ for her and some marriage proposals were already in the pipeline. However, any day, Mili preferred a love marriage to an arranged one. One day her friend Abir told her, “There is this engineer at my office, Vipin Satpathy. He is a good friend of mine. He liked you when he saw our picnic photos and wants to get introduced to you.”

Mili said, “Give him my office phone number.” She did not want to hurry it up. Her friendship with Abir’s college-friend Subir during her University days and his non-commitment when she began to take the relationship seriously had taught her a lesson. The fact that Vipin’s mother- tongue was different from hers was not an issue at all. Her brother was married to a Telugu girl and she and her father were okay with it. Theirs was in fact a cosmopolitan family. Her mother who had died of cancer almost seven years back was a Bengali. Mili and her parents spoke both Bengali and Marathi quite fluently.

 Her father was still in high school when he had left the shores of Bombay and moved to Kolkata with his parents and five siblings as her grandfather was posted there. When Mili’s father met her mother for the first time at a friend’s wedding, she was only eighteen and extremely beautiful. Mili had heard from her mother that it took her father about a year to propose to her. They always met at their common friend’s place and both their parents were liberal enough, even in the early 70s, to agree to the match.  

Two weeks later, during their third telephonic conversation, Vipin told Mili, “I really really want to meet the lady with the husky voice.” She laughed it off saying, “I am in no haste to meet you. Can we remain just phone-friends?” Vipin said, “I am coming to your office this Saturday. This will be a blind date. So, let me know what you’ll be wearing so that I can spot you. I wanted Abir to come with me, but I guess he is busy.”

Mili muttered a quick ‘Ok’ realizing fully well that he would definitely not listen to her this time. During both their earlier phone calls, Vipin had been telling her, “I can’t understand why you don’t want to meet me.” Mili’s reply had been, “Why hurry?”

He was there that Saturday and she had told him that she would be in jeans and a black shirt. They hardly spoke while watching The Wolf and even while having food at a restaurant later on. He seemed to be a reserved guy. Mili wondered, “Probably, a blind date is always like this.” While parting, Vipin told Mili, “I’ll be in touch.”

Mili’s colleagues in her lunch group had said, “Mili, this means that he likes you.” At this, Mili had blushed and they had started teasing her saying, “Just see her beetroot face.”

They met again next week. This time they talked more about their lives. He stayed with his married sister in Kolkata while his family lived in Orissa.

Mili became a happier person by the third time they met. Vipin was a very warm and caring person. They called each other every day, which was not easy as mobile phones were not the in-thing then. Office landlines came in handy. In fact, both of them came up with something interesting. The days he worked the night-shift, she would give a missed call on his office landline early in the morning, the minute her father left home for the local vegetable market. Vipin would call her back within a few minutes. Mili’s day thus started on a bright note.

In a flash, all the wonderful moments spent with Vipin five years back came back to her – the first time they held hands at a movie hall, their visit to Nicco Park and their first kiss there while gazing at the beautiful sunset, sipping pomegranate juice whenever they went to New Market, roaming around and showing him all the places of interest in the City of Joy. Mili found Vipin to be a die-hard romantic who pampered her with gifts galore every time they met and that kept their romance alive and sparkling. When she shared her love story with her married colleagues, they said, “We are married but you are the happiest.”

 Mili taught Vipin, Bengali; it was not difficult as he could already speak a bit of it earlier. Mili, on the other hand, already knew Oriya, Vipin’s mother-tongue, having stayed in Cuttack for three years when her father was posted there. Vipin often told her, “You’ve given my life a different meaning. I decided to stay back in Kolkata because of you. I could die for you.”

 Mili had at last found somebody to share her views with and felt increasingly attached to Vipin. Vipin preferred to hang out at Scoop, the restaurant overlooking the Ganges and their meetings there normally ended with a boat-ride on the Ganges discussing their day-to-day activities and together weaving dreams of a happy marriage and lots of babies adding to their bliss.

Once just before Vipin had to go to his hometown, Bhubaneswar after his youngest sister had a baby, he told Mili, “I will tell my family members that I want to marry you. I presume that my eldest brother will be opposed to this alliance, going by his nature. But I hope to convince my parents and my six other siblings.” Mili had earlier heard Vipin speak about his eldest brother who was a good eighteen years older than him. He had told her about his political acumen during his college days, his misconduct with the Principal of his college which led to his rustication from college. From what Vipin had told her, Mili felt that Vipin feared his brother.

However, during that trip, he barely discussed Mili with his family. He showed her photo to his mother realizing fully well that her acceptance did not matter and his conservative eldest brother was the real head of his family as his old parents were also dependant on him. From that time onwards, Mili had a strange premonition that their relationship would not culminate into marriage. She often told him, “I am not in a hurry for marriage. I can wait for ten years or even more.” To which Vipin would reply, “Your  father has to see you married off as you don’t have your mother.”

Further, Mili considered the fact that they could never be together during festivals, due to various reasons, a bad omen.

Mili could see Vipin getting down from the bus at the same place where his office was located those days. This meant that he worked for the same organisation even now. As she saw him enter the lane and walk ahead, her thoughts raced back to the day they met after he returned from a trip to his hometown exactly six months after they had first met. This was his second trip to his hometown after they met and a very important one for Mili as it would decide whether Vipin would be hers. She called him and asked, ‘Hi Vipin! What happened back home? You did not call me, so I decided to connect.” Vipin sounded upset, “Have been really busy with work. Let’s meet tomorrow and talk.” The next day, when they met, she could gauge from his facial expression and body language that their relationship would never be the same again.

His eyes welled up with tears when he spoke, “Mili, I have left no stone unturned to tell my family that I cannot live without you. My parents and siblings excluding my eldest brother of course had agreed to accept you as my bride. However, my eldest brother is very headstrong about my marriage and feels that my love for you is only an infatuation and a passing phase. He is absolutely against me marrying you. He has made it clear that I have to marry the girl my family chooses for me. The problem is I cannot say no to him as he has raised me up like his own son and provided for my education because my parents were old. He is also a heart patient and knowing fully well about the bad temper that he has, I simply cannot go against him.”

Mili turned speechless on hearing the ill-fated words and wept inconsolably. A tear-drenched Vipin put his arms around her and drew her close to him. She regained composure, wiped his tears and said, “I do understand dear.”

Vipin had later consoled a heartbroken Mili with the words, “Darling, we’ll be together in our next life, I promise. Nothing can stop me then.” They had continued meeting each other occasionally…till Mili’s wedding was fixed. Mili asked him to return all the letters that she had written to him. When Vipin came with the letters, she tore all of them as if putting an end to this chapter of her life.

Next week, she saw Vipin again in the same bus and went forward and spoke to him. She asked him about his marriage and family. He had a two-year-old son. Mili was still childless. Mili did not reveal to Vipin that her husband was to say the least, not a loving and caring person at all.

Mili was engulfed with a strange feeling when Vipin spoke to her, as if the vacuum that was building up within her these days had shrunk. She felt that it was she who could die for him… even now...

“Do you still have the shirt that I gave you?” she asked him, her eyes moist.

“Yes, of course……” His gaze rested on her kohl-lined eyes.

She whispered in desperation, “Can’t we remain friends? My husband doesn’t talk much. You know how much I need to share.”

Her eyes smiled when he said, “We are friends…and please smile…”

 A new chapter with no strings attached had just begun for the two of them.