Short Story

[I have this feeling that one of these days, I'm going to be in serious trouble. I look out the window, find a girl with a book in her hand and here I'm with a story! God help me.]

Love Unrequited:

Shipra was the daughter of my next door neighbour; Mr. Sen. She was 16 or 17, in the full bloom of youth. The mass of ruffled, curly hair that she would tie in a bun at the back; her black eyes held the mystery of the unfathomable ocean topped with a sprouty, curvy figure, would always draw people to her.

I was proceeding to the Milk Depot early in the morning of that gorgeous summer day, when quite unexpectedly I ran into Shipra. Summer was slowly making way for autumn and the fallen leaves from the trees on either side of the road, made some intricate patterns. The sun, behind me in the eastern horizon, was languidly making his way up, casting a golden glow all over.

Shipra had a kasmiri cardigan spread across her shoulders. In her body-hugging dark blue jeans, she was the emerging morning. She looked up from the book she had in her hand and wished me. I greeted her back and still walking, I queried why she was away from the comforts of her residence, reading outside.

“I can’t study inside our room, Sir. I feel like suffocating. I find it easier to concentrate in the fresh air outside ….” She sang out. I nodded and turned my head back to admire the sparkling sun on her hair.

The Board Exams were going on at the fag end of November. Shipra, though not my direct student, was appearing at the Exam for Standard-XII. I was back to my quarters around noon from school as work was light – the home examinations, corrections and preparation of the result, almost everything was nearing completion. I, a lifelong bachelor, might have spent an hour or so cooking lunch. Then I came back to my spacious bed room. The photo of the Hindu God Krishna smiled at me from the calendar on the sea green wall. I drew the inner siphon white curtain for the lower portions of the glass windows aside. The glittering sunlight from outside leaped into my room. Shipra was walking up and down the path below my room on the first floor. She was dressed this time in light blue, torn jeans with a matching sweater. The bow hair band made of artificial multi-colored flowers adorned her head. She looked devastating, destructive at that time. She looked up from her book for a second or two as she found me removing the curtains. She held her book tightly to her chest then. The emerging smile at the corners of her mouth brightened up the day for me. The blue sky with patches of cotton white and the tale-telling mountains at the background capped with the fluttering prayer-flags added a special charm to the afternoon. Mother Nature never could have looked more beautiful.

I smiled back at her, feeling ecstatic. I’d spend the next half an hour or so, I promised myself, watching the vibrant, lovely, luscious Shipra, walking up and down the path below my window with a textbook in her hand.

Shipra though, despite all my attempts at diversion, of distractions rather, never bothered to look up again. I kept up the pretentious air of being busy with a novel called “Tales From the Secret Annex”. The gorgeous blue outside took on a different hue with the light dimmed.

I noticed the lonely sparrow sitting on the electric wire connecting one quarter to another. outside. Just then Ashik, my colleague Mr. Sen’s son, an engineering student, came out of their quarter on the ground floor. He hung up the clothes on the line in the garden in front. At that precise moment, Shipra, the self-assured girl, looked up from her book once again, from the path on the other side of the wall separating the garden. There was a look of hunger and desperation in her eyes as mysterious as the ocean.

The frightened, forlorn sparrow on the wire outside, took to flight as I pulled the curtains back hastily.

The End