Story Brunch
Image by Diamantino Santos from Pixabay
Nilofar Reyaza was my first crush, rather the love of my life. I had fallen in love with her the day she was assigned a seat beside me in class 6th, she had just moved from another school in a different town. She had only one friend in the school, another Muslim girl from her locality, Farah Nazmi. Nilofar was a quiet, silent kind of girl, who never used to interact with anyone else but Farah. The maximum interaction I used to have with her was the return smile she used to give when I would smile at her between class lectures.
It was class 8 when I decided to convey my feelings to her. I didn’t know how to propose or tell my feelings, so I just bought an artificial gold ring from a local market and went to gift it to her just before the first lecture in the morning. She was sitting beside Farah, I hinted to Farah to leave her alone for a few moments. She obliged. I went straight to Nilofar, gave her the ring, and said-
‘Bought it for you, I love you.’
She took the ring in her hand, placed it on her palm, observed it for a few seconds, and gave it back to me-
‘ I can’t take a gold ring from you’.
I told her that it was a cheap artificial gold ring and not some costly ornament that she could not take it. She didn’t take it. I didn’t insist and returned to my desk.
For the next 2 years we did not have any conversations as was the norm even before. It was the class 10th farewell party in which Nilofar came to me,I was assuming she wanted to bid a final goodbye.
In her calm serene tone, she uttered-
‘ Hope u have kept the ring, keep it nicely, it is mine’.
Before I could make any sense of her words, she rushed away, while Farah standing at the door of the classroom passed a distant smile. Both left the room together. That was the last I had seen Nilofar. After matriculation, I moved to a different city, and Nilofar moved to another.
All these years flashed in front of my eyes as I was holding her sketch in my hands, sitting alone in my hostel room. My roommate Kunal had left for class. It was the same calm deep voice that had been addressing me after midnight, I wonder how could I not recognize it in the first instance.
But then, how could it be Nilofar Reyaza?
Mind full of thoughts, I moved for my class lectures. Roaming in my hostel corridors,I thought of calling a school friend who could give me any clue about the whereabouts of Nilofar. I called Siddharth, but he too didn’t have any info about Nilofar after class 10, just like me. Nilofar didn’t use to interact with anyone but Farah, therefore to reach Nilofar,I had to reach Farah Nazmi first. Connecting through many friends, finally I got Farah’s contact number. Surprisingly none had any clue about Nilofar, and only one Muslim guy could get me Farah’s contact because he was her distant cousin.
I would be talking to Farah after 5 years.
I waited till 8 pm before calling her so that I could talk to her for longer. The phone rang.
Thrice.
No one picked.
I was getting impatient and decided to try her number the next day. Was about to enter my hostel when my phone rang. It was Farah. She was totally surprised at the call and asked the reason for contacting her after 5 straight years. I lied to her that I was just connecting with some old schoolmates and I got her number in the process. Mid-conversation,I asked her –
‘And how is your friend Nilofar, no one seems to be knowing about her’.
I could hear her mild laughter and she said that she knew I had called her because of Nilofar and not for connecting with old friends. She informed me that Nilofar had taken admissions at SIST Chennai after the 12th but even she had lost contact with Nilofar for more than a year, and her phone number was not reachable. I asked about her family, to which she said that they had moved to their ancestral home in Varanasi after she finished schooling. Just before hanging up the phone, Farah said-
‘Though Nilofar did not use to share much even with me, she was looking to contact you after her 12th, she had even asked me once to find out your contact number but I did not try much apart from calling 2-3 guys who didn’t have your contact ‘.
My eyes glowed with sudden happiness, and i asked her-
‘Did she like me, anything sort of love or something?’
Farah replied –
‘ No one knows, I guess so, might be, but she never said anything to me, she was just too reserved to share anything,I used to be with her but she never used to be with me, she was always lost in her own thoughts’.
I replied- ”Yes. Something had been troubling her, I remember how she had fainted in the English class, she had a weak heart.”
Farah– ” No one knows Arjun if she had a weak or a strong heart, you never know someone’s circumstances, but I always felt she was closer to you than me, don’t know why but I could feel it. Btw, what did she say to you on the farewell day?”
I was surprised that her best friend did not know what she said to me.
I lied to Farah-‘She just bid me goodbye and said all the best for the 10th results.
Farah-‘Am sure she said much more than that, maybe you can share it some other day.’
We hung the call. While talking to her I had moved to the adjacent sports complex, all alone roaming in the empty playgrounds, thinking that while there I was looking for someone who had left no clue or contact even with her only friend, her voice haunting me since days, no information about the first love of my life, how could someone be so alone, so reserved.
Only the happiest or the saddest persons in the world can afford to be all alone.
Another thought going on in my mind was why had that voice disappeared all of a sudden. I had stopped reciting the mantras told to me by Shakuntala Devi. But then, the locket given by her was still hanging around my neck. I reached my room by around 11 PM and asked Kunal to shift to another room as I had to do an assignment the whole night and he won’t be able to sleep. He left to the adjacent room. I removed the locket from my neck, placed it on the table, and sat in my room balcony looking at the playgrounds.
At around 1 am I got back to my room, switched off the lights, and sat on the chair. It was around 1.45 AM that I could sense the change in environment, complete silence prevailed, the winds seemed to have stopped, and I could feel nothing.
Ten minutes later, someone knocked at the door. I placed my hands on the table near the locket and did not touch it, but it was only at a finger’s distance.
I gathered some courage and asked –
‘ Who’s there?’.
The voice I had been waiting for that night.
‘Arjun, open the door, you never open the door, pls open it’.
Fear struck me like lightning thunder. I replied-‘ But first tell me who are you?’
The voice-‘ You know me Arjun, open the door pls’.
I replied- ‘I don’t know you, please tell me so that I can open the door, are you, Nilofar?’
No one replied.
A few moments later I heard a light flash on my room ventilation and a loud bang on the door as if someone kicked it too hard. There was complete silence for the next 15 minutes. I opened the door slightly and peeped outside. There was no one, as expected. I went out, knocked on the door of adjacent rooms, none responded, all were asleep. It was 2.30 AM. I resigned to my room, wore the locket around my neck, and went to bed. I realized that the cook cum astrologer, Shakuntala Devi could solve the mystery.
Next Sunday I went to her home with Mohak and narrated the whole ordeal, told her about Nilofar as well. She was perplexed. She told me that it was not possible that it could be Nilofar, it might be some other spirit whose voice I was confusing with some lost love.
After thinking for a few moments she said-
‘If you are so sure that it’s Nilofar’s voice, you should contact her once and find out ‘.
The journey to contact Nilofar had to begin. It was not an easy task to find out someone who was not in touch with anyone in the world whom I knew or had ever known. The only clue I had was SIST, Chennai. I waited till summer vacation, and informed my home that I had scheduled an eye checkup at Shankar Netralaya and I would first go to Chennai. It was the third week of May that I landed in Chennai for the first time ever.
I stayed in a hotel for the night and went to the college campus the next day. I had thought it should be easy for me to find her, but on entering the campus I found out that there were not hundreds of students but thousands of them. Enquiring various students from different branches did not work. I went to their admin department for help, but they denied any info about any student until and unless I establish some formal relationship with the student through some ID card or any other means. It was lunchtime and I asked one of the guys the way to the canteen. He told me that their mess was free for all and anyone could go and have lunch there. I went to the mess, it was a huge hall, hundreds of students seated, having lunch. It was a common mess for boys and girls. Something struck my mind and I went straight to the female staff serving food and asked her if she knew some Muslim girl Nilofar.
She didn’t understand any word of mine, except ‘Nilofar’.
But she displayed keen interest in hearing Nilofar and asked one of the guys having lunch to come and explain to her in Tamil what I was speaking. Anyway,finally, I came to know that Nilofar had left the college a year ago, all of a sudden, as she had failed to pay her college fees. She helped me get her address from the administration staff, of Nilofar’s new hometown, Varanasi. I got a contact number as well, which was ‘temporarily disconnected’.
The search had prolonged. Someone who knocks on one’s door can be found out by just opening the door, and there I was roaming between two metros, and now had to find out about her in another city, Varanasi. I spent the rest of the day at Marina beach and flew back to Delhi in the evening, the same day. With Nilofar’s address.
Everything seemed suspicious, sudden disappearance of Nilofar from Farah’s life, withdrawal from her engineering course, and no contact number.
Not to forget the door knocks. I wasn’t quite sure if I should continue my search after all the locket and mantras were working fine for me.
But then, it was my own curiosity now, to find out about the girl I had loved. I decided to go to Varanasi and booked my tickets for Shivakashi express the next day. I used to keep the ring in my hostel room which she had asked me to preserve nicely, something which I had bought for just around 50 rupees. I decided to gift her the ring when I would meet her that time, so I made sure to keep it in my wallet before leaving for Banaras.
I reached Varanasi in the evening, my second visit to the town. I moved directly from the station to the address I had got. I had not informed even Farah about my journey to Varanasi. In fact, no one knew about my visit. I reached an area on the outskirts of the town, the house resembled an old abandoned Haveli, with an equally dilapidated mosque by its side. There were no houses nearby. Not sure if I should knock on her door at 8 pm, someone whom I had last seen more than 5 years ago. I thought of visiting the house the next day as it was completely dark and I could not sense any human presence around.
As I turned to go back, a lamp lit in one of the haveli windows, and the shadow of a girl marked its presence on the window panes.
She moved and I could hear the sounds of ‘payal’.
Might be Nilofar, or might be her mother. I decided to knock on the haveli door, a large wooden door with a big hole to view the visitor. Lamplight appeared and a girl draped in a white plain kurta appeared, with a dupatta wrapped around her face, with only her eyes visible. I asked her if it was Nilofar’s house. She nodded yes, and asked me if I was Arjun. I was completely surprised by her question, how the hell did she know that I was going to visit the house, and who was she?
I said yes, and she asked me to step inside. I followed her to a large hall with all wooden furniture and lit only by oil lamps. Everything looked hazy and unclear, not a single person was to be found. She asked me to sit and went inside a room, only to return half an hour later. Both fear and anxiety had taken over me, I was sitting all alone in a Muslim colony household, with the only presence of a young girl whom I didn’t even know, but she knew me. She came and sat on the wooden chair in front of me, reclined backward, and started staring at the ceiling.
Wondering, I told her that I was Nilofar’s friend and had come to see her. She was still staring at the ceiling fan. She was moving to and fro on the reclining chair, few moments later she stopped suddenly, and removed the dupatta from her face.
She was Nilofar Reyaza Khan, sitting in front of me.
The most beautiful girl in the world. She smiled and said- ‘We hold too many expectations, don’t we? I had been waiting for you and here you couldn’t even identify me, you couldn’t identify your Nilofar’.
Surprised, shocked, and relieved at the same time, I too smiled back. Relieved because all my apprehensions and assumptions about her sudden disappearance had vanished. She was alive and healthy sitting in front of me. As beautiful as ever. I opened my wallet and handed over the ring to her. She didn’t display any surprise.
She replied-
‘ I knew you will preserve it, the golden color has fainted, but then, so is life’.
After a pause she said-
‘ How does it feel to know that the person you loved the most loves you the most as well’.
I replied- ‘No feeling can be more amazing than it’.
She said– ‘ I had felt the same when you gifted the ring to me the first time.’
My internal happiness knew no bounds, I realized that Nilofar loved me as well. It was the most beautiful moment of my life.
Only I and Nilofar were witness to it.
I asked her about her family, and she said her parents had gone to an ailing uncle’s house and should return the day after. I told her that it wouldn’t be right for me to stay at her home and I should visit her the next day, it was already 9 pm.
She insisted to stay at her home and convinced me that there wouldn’t be any problem, I could stay in the guest room in the courtyard.
Her home smelled all of wood and dust. As if it had not been cleaned for ages, only the hall was tidy. After a while, she went into another room with a plea to cook dinner for me. I was simply staring at the walls when my phone rang.
It was Farah Nazmi.
I took the call but I was not able to hear her properly due to poor network. I went into the open dimly lit courtyard area, where the phone could get a better signal. Farah called again.
Farah- ‘Hi Arjun, I have news for you, it’s regarding Nilofar.’
I could sense sadness and anxiety in her heavy voice.
I replied-‘ What news, did u get her contact?‘.
I had not told her about my expeditions after all.
Farah- ‘Its a bad news Arjun, Nilofar is no more, her Mamajaan informed me today that Nilofar and her mother committed suicide in her ancestral haveli last year. both were found hanging by the ceiling fan’.
I – ‘ Not possible Farah, I will talk to u later.
I didn’t disconnect, Farah was saying- ‘It’s true news, her maternal uncle informed me today evening and I had been trying to reach you but your number was not reachable, are you listening to Arjun, can u hear me, Arjun?’.
I could hear her, but I couldn’t reply to her. I was standing numb in the courtyard. Unable to feel or believe anything. Neither Farah nor the surroundings. A sense of uneasiness was gripping me.
I stood there for half an hour, to be interrupted by the girl with the oil lamp in her hand, Nilofar-
‘ What are u doing in the courtyard, it is a big haveli and u might get lost’.
I didn’t utter a word.
Nilofar-‘Were u talking to someone, I heard your voice, was it a call from home?‘.
I was standing staring at her, the beautiful girl clad in pure white, standing at the rust-laden iron gate, news of whose death I had just received on my phone.
