Half Painted Pink Nails

THAT'S HOW IT WAS MEANT TO BE

He hadn't seen her since his birthday, even talking to her was difficult; where she was, the signal quality was not so good. He had started writing emails to her intermittently on her email ID and kept checking for any social feeds from her. He was aware that she needed to report the findings of her research to the head office and to meet the district development officials for which once in a week she would visit the nearest sub-urban area and access her e-mails. Slowly, his discontent and confusion had started reflecting in his emails too. Then one day, she called and they had a long conversation stretching into more than an hour. While both talked about how life had been treating them, Vrinda had called for a purpose. She wanted to invite Chinmay to where she was. Understandably, the tribals were soon going to have one of their most important youth festivals of the year and she wanted Chinmay to come and witness it. The festivities would spread over a few days and she wanted him to arrive a day in advance to understand the various customs. Chinmay was unsure, with so many important things going on at workplace, if he would be able to spare time for this. Besides, he had never taken a long break from work and that too an unplanned one. However, he missed her and missed her terribly by now. He wanted to know her world, spend time with her. Yet he did not commit and left it at that saying he would think about it. However, as the scheduled dates of the festival were approaching, his desire to meet Vrinda and share her life kept on increasing. He would often open his computer to re-read some mails sent by her or to look at her photographs he had taken at Pench. Then one day he sent her a message asking how to reach there.

He was to reach Raipur in Chattisgarh by air and take a state transport bus to Jagdalpur and get down at Kondagaon. He had heard about Kondagaon as it was famous for Bastar Arts. The tribal artists create some of the most famous tribal imagery in iron, bringing out a unique view of life, nature and the gods, through age-old processes of metalwork. Chinmay reached Kondagaon around noon. The journey from Raipur to Kondagaon was a good five hour drive. The bus dropped him in front of a Hero Honda showroom on National Highway 43. A short but stout man, in his late twenties, approached him and showed him a paper with his name on it. He recognized Vrinda's writing and suddenly his fatigue vanished. Chinmay got to know that this man was Sirdar, he and his sister Belosa, were amongst the few educated natives of the village, Umarbal, he was about to visit, who had decided to stay back in the village and work towards its upliftment. He remembered Vrinda mentioning those names in one of her emails. Chinmay was bit surprised and bemused to see that Sirdar had come on a bicycle to fetch him. Maybe that was the best way to reach wherever they were heading. And while he was prepared to ruff it up a little, he already felt butterflies in his stomach. Sirdar seemed to be a joyous man, humming all along the drive; he spoke good hindi, though with a heavy accent and spoke only when he was asked something. Chinmay also didn't know what to talk about, much he thought he was going to discover anyways and moreover, he had other problems to deal with. The journey seemed a never ending one; the road below them had vanished after a while and now they were driving through lanes cut through paddy fields and where there were no fields, the terrain was rough, interspersed with small rocks and pebbles. Sitting behind Sirdar in the carrier with his rucksack on his shoulders, Chinmay's bum hurt so badly that he wondered if it would turn blue by the time they reach. He would ask Sirdar to stop and readjusted himself every now and then. On his way, he saw two more such settlements, children running around naked, unattended cattle and poultry, hardly any shops, men with bare torsos, women in sarees, tenements that looked far modest than what he had witnessed even in other villages across India. He felt surprised about the disparity in development between urban and rural. After almost an hour and half's turmoil, he heard Sirdar say, "We are about to reach." And the moment he bent a little sideways to see the way ahead, he could see a figure standing by the tree, he could recognize as Vrinda. Chinmay jumped off the bicycle, walked up to her, took out his hand for a handshake and said with a big smile, "Look I am here." Vrinda couldn't hide her happiness, "I knew you would be" and hugged him as she said so. There was an unusual longing that had developed between them over the past few days and somewhere it was evident and caused a certain excitement mingled with tentativeness.