Colors of dew
It was just 3 minutes for the bus to leave the depot. My eyes were impatiently scanning through the crowd. An array of negative thoughts and panic squeezed my heart, “Has he changed his house? Maybe he has finished school. Will I never see him again?” With moist eyes and a pounding heart, I kept looking out of the window and just then, I saw him making his way through the crowd to board the bus. I was in the 9th standard then. We boarded the same public bus to school.
Every day, I would take my usual place on the window side and he would stand with his group of friends in my line of vision. Often our eyes would meet only to part again within seconds. On that day, the bus was unusually crowded. With much difficulty, I had reached the door when my stop arrived but my schoolbag got stuck in the crowd. While I was trying to pull it with all my strength, I heard his voice, “Let it go. You get down first”. He pulled the bag amidst a lot of chaos and handed it over to me. Balancing his weight on the footrest, he looked at me. I looked up and saw him smiling as he said, “Take care”. Before I could utter a word, the bus sped off. I stood there for a few seconds blushing. That was the first time he spoke to me and the last time we met.
Perhaps, he had finished school or maybe, he had left the city or may be…that is our story. Do you think I have any regrets for it now? Well, I know just one truth. I know how beautifully he has colored a part of my life.
We love planning and organizing our life. We live with the constant fear of losing control of our lives. Thus, we choose the people we mingle with, the places we visit, things we want to hear or vice versa and also, we think we can make our destiny. But honestly, I do not know what is more beautiful — the destiny or the journey.
As I look back to relive some of the most memorable moments of my life so far, the memory of a particular day comes as a flashback. In the holidays after my 12th board examination, I was invited by my friend, Indira, to her Grandma’s house. Bubbly, outspoken, extroverted Indira. Although we were not very close in school, there was a bond between us. When I reached the house, she greeted me with a welcome drink. One sip and I hated it. I was aware of her group of friends watching me. I tried to hide my expression with a smile as I thought, “This must be the latest soda in market — colorless, tastes like a mixture of cough syrup and cumin. Is this what they call ‘masala soda’? Oh! Now stop freaking out like a kiddo!” As I emptied the glass in one go, all her friends cried out in unison, “Cheers!” It then struck me that it wasn’t any ‘masala soda’. When she explained to me in her highly animated style, how she had mixed soda, Vodka and cumin, I promised myself, “I will never meet this reckless girl again.” I held back my emotions to avoid a scene.
At lunch, all of us sat on her terrace in a circle and enjoyed the home-cooked delicious Bengali food. This was followed by an evening of music, poetry and an amazing exchange of freely flowing thoughts. I realized it then that never before had I come across such a carefree group of people. They created a heavenly symphony with glasses, cups and spoons. Sitting on the terrace with the golden hue of the setting Sun coloring our faces, far from the hustle of the city, I discovered a new world that day.
Do you think I kept the promise I made that morning? Well, Indira is my best friend till this day. Of course not because she introduced me to Vodka but because of her fiery nature. The more our friendship deepened the more I realized that our life is beautiful with its incompleteness and imperfection. That every good and bad experience in our life has its role to play. She seemed to me like a drop of dew. Have you ever seen a drop of dew dance on the tip of a leaf? Does it have a color? It takes the color green while it kisses the green leaves good morning. It twinkles with a golden hue when the first ray of dawn flirts with it. It doesn’t resist the colors that paint it so beautifully.
We are all tiny drops of dew that meet to form a bigger dew and then part to take some other color, some other form or to meet another dew. That is the beauty in us, the power to accept and adapt to different colors, different shapes.
