CHAPTER 22 - Those Were the Best Days of My Life

Love, Loss, Loneliness and Longing, part 6

*Those Were the Best Days of My Life

In fact, only after almost a month and a half of dilly-dallying did Una and I meet in person. We often postponed our first meeting because we didn’t want to break the charming spell we were enjoying while talking on the phone or do away with the fine sense of ignominy which was well worth its while. Una once told me she found my voice sweet or am I trying to impress her? I had said “both” and cackled indulgently. I understand that Monami, her fast friend, supposed to have continually mused on behalf of Una as she remarked: “voice toh sweet hai, dekhne mein kaisa hoga?” I did not meet Monami until I had met Una. When Una used to call me, Monami liked to barge into our telephonic conversation and share a word or two. I got to know her first thusly.

Those days were the happy days of my life. It made me realize that Una was probably the one true reason why my life was being led to a world full of delightful anticipation and happiness. Our phone calls were so frequent and engaging that we felt like keeping our ‘on-phone’ relationship agreeably prolonged. Before making up our minds to see one another in person, we gave our relationship a little more time to mature. I guess we decided to make the best for last.

I remember oh so well watching Falguni Pathak’s chartbuster love songs on MTV: “yaad piya ki ane lagi” and “maine payal hai chankayi…” and thinking about Una all day and night. Humming Pankaj Sarawgi's beautifully picturized song: "Mujhe pyaar hai tumse..." brings back those memories again. I'll never forget this song.

"Mujhe pyaar hai tumse..
Ke jab bhi koi..
Aahat hue toh lage...
Ke tum aaye....
...
Sawala salona haye chehra yeh tera...
Aankhiyon mein basa hai yeh palko ki tarah..."

My days were literally filled with the tender fragrance of my jaanu (beloved) and her sweet voice on the phone. Life was so much worth living. Subsequently, our telephonic tête-à-têtes started to gain on a hue of assurance and desire and we settled on a date in September to meet. I grew restless and jumpy and so did she. I went home early on the day when our rendezvous was set up at Aditya Coffee Shop. In fact, after I have had my share of toiling in office, I was almost a spent-force to be game for a date with whom I had regarded as ‘someone special’. I was obviously impressed with her because my apprehensions got the better of me and I felt freshly energized to meet her. The joy of meeting a person whom you’ve never met before is something to be experienced to be believed. I had different varieties of ticklish butterflies in my stomach fluttering about. Time just flies by on such an occasion of delectable expectations. Small fears and trepidation in the form of what will happen if…? what will she…? will she…? is it ok to…? are enough to make you go dizzy with wonder. And furthermore, one finds oneself spending copious amounts of time on one’s toiletries and dressing than otherwise would have done in other ‘normal’ circumstances. That was our first ‘blind date’ and I wanted to make it count for both of us.

This is how I made it count: I finished my harrowing scheduled shift at 3 o’clock and headed straight home to give myself some shringaar. I knew the day will come when I would meet her. I had bought an assortment of personal care products. First on my list was Denim perfume (my favourite, but they don’t make that perfume anymore) and I reckoned that it’s perfectly okay to indulge a little now that I’m going on a date – an important event of my life no less. I ensured that my new well-tailored shirt (maroon checks, bought at Cheap Jack on MG Road) was ironed well and had just the right creases for the sophistication I had intended to ooze! (I still have that old shirt and I wear it sometimes to the office; strong nostalgic value you see.) I had a slow dream-like shave and dappled my cheeks with Denim after-shave lotion and felt fresh and manly. When I was tip-top ready, I rode all the way to the venue humming “aye kaash ke hum hosh mein ab aane na paye…” a delightful song from the Hindi movie Kabhie Han, Kabhie Na.

I drove at a speed of 50-55kph (nothing great about the speed, I know!), reached early, parked my bike, combed my hair, and took my position! I sat on a sit-out parapet railing and looked down the road I thought she would come riding astride her bike. For over three quarters an hour I held up my vigil like a newly-bred Majnu, and when Her Highness was still not turning up I decided to call her from a nearby telephone booth across the road. She got my call after the first ring and when I said “Hello” she knew from my voice I was on the line.

“Hi…? Arin…? Give me just 10 minutes na please and I’ll be there”, said she.
I said laughing, “Sure. Come soon Mademoiselle. Um waiting… see ya byee!”

At last, come she did and the melody I was humming “kab se kare hain tera intezar, kab ayegi meri jaane bahaar…” froze, as if set automatically on a pause button. One glance at her…whoa! I knew she was the one, my ‘special someone’ with whom I had shared almost every little detail of my life on our endless telephonic conversations is right there. By all accounts a blind date it was, with someone, I already knew telephonically but never had up till now seen her face. So now I know who I was talking to all during the enchanting season of August and September months of our eager courtship. Una wore a pastel-hued virgin pink (her most loved shade) salwaar and I instantly noticed that she had an exquisite stance about her which was really so attention-grabbing. She was riding a Kinetic Honda. The spike holding the right-hand side mirror was wrapped with a red perforated holy scarf (laced with shiny golden border laces); apparently, it was tugged there as a reminder for her to drive safely. A nice thing to do really. She was an incredibly pretty lady, just like her name suggests. I was stunned into thinking that she looked no less than a pariyon ki rani (Angel Princess!); certainly not of this mortal world. Evidently, Una Artoran has a strong closeness in appearance to an actress by the name Preeti Jhangiani, and it never goes unnoticed even at the first glimpse.

Now, people should have laughed watching me doing what I could, yeah, to the best of my knowledge, trying to put up some sort of a brave front to meet her.

I descended down the short marble-tiled steps (for a moment I thought I would trip and fall on the pavement and break my front teeth! but I didn’t) and stood confidently in the parking lot in front of the Aditya coffee shop. A ready glee frolicked on my face and an almost absent will-power to meet ‘a girl’ had muddled my mind into self-consciousness and hesitance. I don’t know how but I just about managed to be up and about. I didn’t know how I could muster up that kind of insouciant confidence to go on a blind date. But I did it, you know. Basically, I was content about the fact that Una turned out to be what I had imagined her to be. She looked up tossing her coy tresses tending them back in place; she clutched her bag and dashed a meaningful glance at me smiling warmly, and then our evening rendezvous was well set to roll.

After we got a corner table, I ordered a couple of coffees with house-special cupcakes. Our conversation took off on a free note which really surprised us at first. I mean, normally, meeting someone whom you haven’t seen or met before - except of course one might have talked endlessly with the same person over the phone day in and day out - how is one supposed to react or interact without getting self-conscious or nervous? I didn’t know, didn’t have even an inkling, neither did she I believe. Interestingly, what I did sense in Una’s cool appearance is her easy-going, well-honed confident persona; her subtle countenances were at once very pleasing to behold, sharpened by her black kohl-lined eyes. Not only was I bowled clean but also it made me feel uncomfortably conscious of my humble self.

Thankfully, however, it came as a big relief to me when she coolly began talking without much ado or gumption as she sat across me with a smile on her lips that I wager was like to that of Angels I had read in the books or saw in the movies. What had actually assailed me up to the brim of my soul is the fragrance of her floral beauty. She was a woman of substance. I marvelled at her art of conversation which struck me as profoundly intriguing. Her conversational subjects, between her laughter, knew no limits. She indulged in it copiously. One naturally anticipates a finance graduate to somehow come round talking about “finance” not trying to see whether the person before you like it or abhors it, but luckily she was far removed from such leniency.

Her compelling allure of beauty combined with her intricate artwork of a smile frolicking all over her lipstick-lined slim lips and her face illuminating the whole corner of the room – all this had kept me possessively enchanted throughout the course of that thoroughly dreamy evening I had spent with her at the coffee shop.

Ever since our first blind date going all-good, we always met over coffee at Aditya Coffee Shop, an exclusive underground coffee shop meant for lovers or soon-to-be-lovers, and had exchanged quite a few pleasantries. Time and again she found me marveling at her kohl-lined eyes! Una’s elegant black eyes were naturally a good conversation-starter for me. I gaped in wonder at those luminous black eyes and have written copious poetic verses in my mind and sang romantic songs in my heart – just for her. (I dabbled in poetry in those days and my muse was right in front of me!) Let God be in heaven; she was a great looker.

The reason, apparently, why she thought of gifting me a Parker is that she sensed what better gift but a pen for a scorching pen-pusher cum first-time (first-time?) lover like me!

In fact, prior to our first meeting, we had been exchanging emails profusely and chatting away on the phone as if mesmerized to the point of no return! No amount of office work could make me abstain from writing her long emails and likewise, no amount of office work could prevent her from perusing my emails. I loved writing to her every single day before I had logged off my computer and called it a day. She would call me back the next day and talk about the things I wrote to her and her plans to meet me at 'our' coffee place we frequented. Una once told me that my writings (emails) are so “detailed”. I very well remember writing about the movie I liked very much watching at a theatre; it was Dr. DoLittle. Writing about the story of the film gave me such joy that for the simple love of sharing it with Una I ended up writing a long email of several bytes in length which ultimately reached her erratic office email box in two or three fractured installments! There was another movie by the name of Patch Adams (one of my most loved movies) that had greatly moved me. A couple of days later when I wrote about Patch Adams she replied back saying that it was like seeing the movie itself on account of my florid portrayals of it in my email to her! Carrying me on the wings of her appeasing compliment, I had soared high to the heavens and back!

Sweet girl; she liked to agree/concur with everything I said or opinionated on in my email messages to her, and I adored her - almost obsessively and self-centredly - for everything she was as a person, and what she used to talk about while sipping coffee. Our ‘feelings’ for each other were gradually deepening. I admit I never knew how to hold an approving girl's hand or look in the eyes and say the three magic words. But all that changed instantly, as though by some magic! Cuddling her hands in mine for a long while - sometimes almost to the point of breaking a sweat - till the closing hours of the coffee shop, was my way of obsessing about my perfect meetings with her. Coming home every day with an ‘expression’ dancing upon my face and keeping awake till the small hours of the morning thereafter was my daily routine. I had no way of knowing if anybody used to notice (except Savitha Tandavi) when I danced to Una’s love - I was pretty curious to know. Nobody knew of my affair with Una. Manpreet knew only a superficial little. Of course, Savitha knew it and vowed to destroy it. The ‘expression’ on my face said it all, “Oui ma...I am in love…so totally in love... yea yeaa yeaaa!”

I, Arinvan Maliek, do hereby affirm that I have totally fallen in love, deeply, with a manchali Himachali, Una Artoran. 

Pompous Roy

Once Monami ‘Fishsketcher’ Roy had joined me and Una at Aditya Coffee Shop and talked about wanting to see the film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. They had been planning to make it to Manju Theatre, and one fine day they went and saw the mushy film. It was the festival month of October when the film was released and Navratri and Dussehra were not far behind. I was already busy shopping for clothes. Finally, I went to see it with one of my university amigos Praveen Kumar at the same Manju Theatre. By then Una and Monami had already seen the film there. I liked the film so very much that it led me to think of Rani as Una! No comparison there because Una was slim and the fine actress was considerably roly-poly. At one point during the interval, swinging his share of a plastic bag of chips and a bottle of Thums Up, Praveen Kumar urged me not to criticize Hindi flicks like this one, especially the one with Rani Mukherjee in it, and I ought to take it easy because he likes her. Well, then the case is closed!

Oh well, I wasn’t overly critical of the film; I simply opinionated that I did like Rani Mukherjee’s serene beauty (Praveen didn’t know that my doe-eyed kohl-lined sweetheart Una was high on my mind then while his mind was jammed packed with Rani Mukherjee!) in the song

“Tum pass aye yun muskuraye

Tumne na jaane kya sapne dikhaye

Ab to mera dil jaage na sota hai

Kya karun haaye kuch kuch hota hai”

The song

“Ladki badi anjani hai

Sapna hai sach hai kahaani hai

Dekho ye pagli bilkul na badli

Ye to vohi deewani hai
Ho ho ho ho...”

picturized on ugly-pugly Kajol and Shah Rukh was another chartbuster song that had us hooked. Lo and behold! He now warns me not to pass judgment on Rani. I wasn’t actually, in fact, I liked her a lot and her acting is brilliant. Yeah…yeah… you got it right, his heart went aflutter on his sweet Rani and so I have no business in her whatsoever! Even as harmless as appreciating Rani was objectionable to him! Kya zamana ah gaya hai, bhai! (What has the world come to, oh brother!).

In fact, on account of Monami’s standard break-ins during my lovey-dovey phone calls to Una, she got to know that my favourite curry is Fish curry, and the more jhaal jhaal (spicy spicy!) it is the better. So she sketched a big torpedo-shaped fish (with prominently drawn fish scales, pectoral fins, pelvic fins and all – probably macher raja (King of Fish), a Rohu variety! on a wonderful paper-cutting shaped like a big fleshy scrumptious fish and offered it to me. (Ah! Hah! I didn’t have to cast a line or hook a worm to catch it! I told my Ma to cook it but she laughed!).

The free-hand sketch was so endearingly good to look at, as though of a lovely presentation from a friend to another friend. Una appreciated Monami and her delicate paper Fish sketch profusely. I was so damn pleased with Monami’s gift (of Fishy Poetic Business, my term) sitting on my lap that it made me agape in deep certitude. That evening Una kept smiling her million-dollar smile even as Monami got to her evening best in the coffee shop with such jovial aplomb that as if all the Lilies and Roses and Lotuses of the natural world were dilly-dallying on her lively round face.

END OF PART 6 OF ‘LOVE, LOSS, LONELINESS AND LONGING, part 6’

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

*Note: The above story Chapter 22 – Those Were the Best Days of My Life is reproduced here verbatim from the original story titled "The Memory of Love, a short story" (web link: http://arindammoulick.blogspot.in/2011/07/memory-of-love-short-story.html) published here in my blog Pebbles On The Beach. "The Memory of Love, a short story" was written in the year 2011 with different character names (but same storyline) has found its way here as part of the chapter-wise presentation of my memoir "Lost Days of Glory, a Memoir". I have merely changed the character names of the original story with new names and additionally made some small changes (basically some words/sentences are put in a different way) in the overall narrative to suit the present storyline under the new title “Chapter 22 – Those Were the Best Days of My Life”. This is for the reader’s information only.

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.