The Unventured Passions

Old Wounds and Some New

Hearts filled with love, beat with the joy of every new deed and seek chances to enrich the lives of others. Love spills from them, and so their kin grow strong also. Such people are the social glue, the ones with the power to knit others together with invisible strings of happiness and fraternity. And so the loving heart is a gift, not simply to the person who keeps it safe in their flesh, but to everyone whose life they touch. Such a heart sends out ripples of love that keep on going in the present and into the future yet untold.
Bondita was such a soul; loving... giving...

The sky was still clouded, but the cloud in Koreem's mind had completely faded, giving way to a beautiful rainbow of love and gratitude.
It was Bondita's doing...
This was the intensity of her effect on people...
And this was what Anirudh admired the most.

Handing the food tray back at Manimala, who was waiting for her inside the entrance, Bondita had walked straight inside the marbled courtyard that adorned the periphery of their house. She sat down underneath the round cemented tree in the middle of the courtyard and rested her back against its trunk.
How strange life was!
It takes only moments to make relationships...
It takes only love to bind souls...
And once you give love, the receipt was so fulfilling, overwhelming.
Wasn't life all about this fulfilment... This bonding?
Then why do people destroy these small yet beautiful emotions of life?

Bondita's thoughts were drifted to Neelmoni Mukherjee, how he had looked at her with fatherly affections, or so she had felt.
How can people change so easily?
In the blink of an eye...
How can love fade?
How?

The quiet afternoon breeze blew through the scarlet petals of the Krishnachura tree, and Bondita picked the fallen ones and rolled them in her fingers unmindfuly. She hadn't applied Alta on her fingers, she doesn't do it these days, and the red tint of the leaves left their mark on her white fingertips.

Why was it so difficult for humans to be happy with what they have?
Why was it they always wish for what's beyond them?
Why was it necessary for Neelmoni to smuggle the arms to the French?
Was he not rich enough? Powerful enough?

The thoughts made her breath heavy as she exhaled sharply and looked down on her lap, a heap of red petals resting on the folds of her saree. Bondita picked up the petals cupping her palms, and brought them closer to her nose.
It had felt as if they would have an aromatic fragrance, just like their appearance... but yet they had none!

Looks can be so deceptive... So so deceptive! She thought.

....................................................

Batuk had just finished dressing up for his college. He wore a simple blue shirt, half sleeved, and teamed it up with black cotton pants. The black suspenders were still hanging loose from his waist as he stood infront of a mirror, styling his hair neatly with a comb. He was happy, his brother was winning, both in personal and professional life, and nothing gave him more contentment than the image of his brother's happy face with Bondita beside him.
The perfect couple, the epitome of happiness! He thought, and there wasn't anything in this world that he won't do to keep that image intact.

Two more hours to go, before the radio broadcast would start, and Batuk was rushing to keep up to the time.
Nothing on earth can make him miss the second half of the case commentary.
And once his brother slays his opponents with his witty arguments, he would call home and exchange his share of victory with his best friend, Bondita.

Batuk's eyes had automatically shone up brightly at the thought and in the next moment they involuntarily fell on the telephone set kept in his room, shattering his chain of thoughts for a moment.