And, the train chugged into the station, platform number 5, 21:20 hours, a month ago I had someone waiting on me outside, tonight as I stepped out of the coach I felt this little niggle within, slowly numbing the senses out of me. All on a sudden, this city seems and feels so alien, it hadn’t felt so cold in a long while.
The places I would frequent now seem to be in their ruins as the cab zoomed past them, the cafeteria where I last had a cup of Irish coffee with her by my side and the pub where both of us had our last selfie clicked, they are now but a thing of the past.
I hadn’t opened up to anyone in a long long time, with her now gone, flashbacks of the days bygone are now coming back to haunt me, the billboards and the skyline of the city hasn’t changed a bit, but the place I fell so much in love with is now seeming terribly alien.
The roads I used to take when I would go to see her, the pavement where I would wait for her, her office and the florist from whom I would get roses for her, nothing has changed, and here I am, moving on, at least pretending to be but still stuck in the days which were the most beautiful part of my life.
The city has given me all that I have, a career, a passion and friends for life, with everything now behind me, I can’t seem to find a reason to feel at home. It’s spring time here, but autumn has set in. All that I had, all the broken pieces she helped gather now broken further, gluing them together wouldn’t be possible for She will forever remain the biggest missing piece of the gigantic jigsaw that life is.
I did not have the luxury to sit back and reflect, although the change was gradual but this is no metamorphosis I am undergoing, the wheel of life spinning away, and me going back to square one with every revolution. Memories coming back, they make me smile and they haunt me too, as if I have woken up to this nightmare, I had imagined this all along but never knew it would be a hard slap on my soul, a knockout punch perhaps.
I open the drawer to find the little stuff she gifted me, a handwritten note, a couple of hair clutches, a book and a box of night jasmine flowers, these are all that I have, I have of her and I have of myself. And, as I unpack my luggage to pack it again, I know I’ll carry them wherever I go.
Guwahati, was but a chapter in the book titled ‘Her’, with me set to turn over to a new page; I know She’ll stay, in the form of nascent memories. I will not see her again, I shall not hear her again; but in the midst of faces unknown I shall look out for her, her voice ringing in my ears, She’s all that now remains of me, all things good, everything beautiful.
The south wind is blowing Dora again, the flowers on the hedges are blooming Dora’s too. She’s here, within me, She’ll stay. She isn’t my soulmate, intertwined to mine, She has my soul, I parted with it.
abhishek purkayastha 