Atoofa Zaeem
Some stories are more interesting and touching than any romantic film or daily soap. It moists your eyes even more when you listen the painful story direct from the mouth of the lead role of the story. A Typical cute and fair Delhi girl, Muskaan (name changed) with big dreams in her life to make her parents and of course relatives proud of her. Maximum girls in her class wanted to choose teacher as their profession when they will grow up and eat lot of chocolates and chips with their salary. So was Muskaan’s dream. After school it was her daily routine to steal the Dupatta cleverly from the heaps of clothes that were kept in a bundle for ironing. And wear the high heels of her mother ,not only this she used to take the long towel from the washroom and keep it on her head pretending it to be her long brown hair and copy her favorite teacher by beating mercilessly the nonliving things around her by naming them as her classmates whom she hated. Her dreams changed with every growing stage of her life. All she wanted was name and fame. She never liked the boy and girl relationship but was very romantic and filmy by heart. She had never thought something unexpected would happen in her life.
Beautifully and carefully done smart look makeup, dressed in a multicolored printed kameez Salwar, white colour kameez with fabric paint dark green flowers on it that made it attractive, Classy silver watch in the left hand, black high heels and a new brown branded bag on left shoulder, with smile on her face and glitter of joy in her eyes, 24 year old Muskaan came out of the colossal white and red airline spice jet after it landed at Bangalore International airport. All her tiredness due to the boring two hour journey was vanished in seconds when she took a deep breath at the airport and took the smell of Bangalore deep in her nerves. She didn’t love Bangalore so much before that she loved this time.
Each second seemed to her as an hour. She didn’t even wanted to take her luggage but only wanted to see the face of her love who was supposed to be outside the airport waiting for her. Yes, Muskaan was deeply in love, it was unexpected for her. She had never thought of it. The same girl was talking madly about love that once used to make fun of this word. She was sure that he would be there and soon their love story would turn into “And they lived happily forever n ever”.
She had to wait for another half an hour for her luggage as there was some problem and all the passengers of her flight had to wait near the luggage belt. The beautiful past moments she had spent with her prince charming were the best time pass for killing the half an hour . Before 1 year she had come to Bangalore for MBA course in Institute of Business Management and technology. Although she was not interested in Business studies but for the sake of her parents she had to remember the difficult theorems and strategies of business. Initially it was very difficult for Muskaan to live in the unknown place that too with so much language problem. Even the milk man speaks English in Bangalore. Majority of her classmates were from South and with the passage of time she was comfortable with them Except with one guy that was from North (Kashmir) smart attractive physique, not so tall, light brown color hair with same color trimmed hair on face. He never paid attention to her neither she talked to him as she only talked to those who started the conversation from their side. The only thing she knew about him was that he belonged to Muslim community as the attendance of each class announced the name of every student and his name was Imran (name changed). Their first conversation started in library when Muskaan saw Imran writing something on computer in Urdu. She was impressed and asked him how he writes Urdu with English alphabets on keyboard. Imran explained the details of inpage software very smartly and also wrote the name of her in Urdu.
Then their conversation increased from morning salaam to How are you? and the conversation went on. The similar language Urdu and may be their only fair complexion too made them more close to each other. They cared for each other; they even enjoyed the boring south Indian food together.
And the relation turned from friends to best friends and ultimately to special friends. They were so much in love with each other that almost the whole college was waiting for their marriage invitations. After one year they both were going to their hometown for vacations and they had promised to talk to their parents about their relationship.
“The luggage is here”. Some lady’s voice brought Muskaan back from her flash back to the real coloured life. The luggage had come on their respective belt. After taking a look on two of the belts she found her blue air bag with spice jet tag on it on belt number 2 and she quickly kept it on trolley and rushed to the exit gate. She had already changed her sim card in the plane but so far she had not received any phone call or message from Imran. The automatic exit gate opened as if it welcomed her in her new life. Her parents have agreed to meet Imran after a long struggle of Muskaan. She had not booked any taxi inside the airport as she had some other plans. She looked like an eagles eye to the front then to the left and finally to right. But he was not there. She thought he must be sitting in the parking area but he was not there. Then she went little steps ahead where many people were sitting in a small garden but he was not there. Soon the shine of joy in her eyes turned into an eclipse with every passing minute. The vision of surroundings was not clear to her as her eyes were filled with tears that had badly smudged the bold kajal in her eyes. The crowd melted away and she was all alone at the cross roads. The familiar place began to appear strange to her first time. His phone was switched off and is still switched off. He never came back. He had joined the business of his dad that too Muskaan knew from his classmates. She still doesn’t know the reason why he left his studies and her, why he came in his life, why he didn’t contacted her. She tried to visit the valley also but couldn’t find him. All her hopes were shattered. She still believes he will come back in her life. She is hurt deep down in her heart. But the small picture of her parents and of course Imran in her wallet keeps her going on in her life.