YOURS TRULY

Part 12

Ipshita checked her wristwatch once more and heaved a sigh again. Forty-five minutes had passed since she was sitting at the café waiting for Abhijit. Running her fingers over her neatly put hair she diverted her gaze to the outside of the glass window of the place. There was no sign of her boyfriend to come but the scorching road of Kolkata in the fearful heat of May vividly came to her sight. Scrunching her nose she took a sip of the cold coffee sitting on the table in front of her.
This while Abhijit appeared into the place pushing the glass door inside. With a nervous smile he approached to the seat she was sitting at.
"I got stuck so badly Ipshita! I am sorry." Abhijit sat down with an apologising smile.
"It's fine Abhi." She said, pushing her cold coffee at his direction for him to take a sip.
"They got this new client at the farm - well actually I was the one to get it-" Abhijit started ranting taking a sip of the coffee with the straw. The cold liquid ran inside him driving the scorched feeling. "So, we got into talking about this case, you know strategies and all - the stuff. Have you ordered?" And then without waiting for Ipshita's reply, he raised his hand to call the waiter.
"I will take mine to go please." After ordering the lunch Ipshita added smiling politely at the waiter.
"To go?" Abhijit frowned.
"Well, my lunch hour is ending in five minutes so-"
"Oh right! I am sorry about that Ipshita." Abhijit said taking the last sip of coffee from Ipshita. She bit her lip to restrain herself from saying the words that were dancing at the edge of her tongue. Cause those were not the words of a lady as maidenlike and as prudent she was raised as.
She saw Abhijit finishing off the coffee cup silently and as he did that she piped down the fuming words inside her and instead said, "yah!" And taking a brief pause added "we are not getting time to spend together these days Abhi. Isn't it."
"Uhhuh!" He replied nonchalantly trying fish out the last choco chip from the pit of the tall frappe glass.
"We should plan something." She murmured.
"We must." Abhijit flashed a smile at her before pulling out the screaming cellphone from his pocket and receiving the call. The waiter came back with the orders.
Taking the box of the turkey sandwich Ipshita stood up mouthing a " bye'" to her boyfriend. The guy in front of her seemed as nonchalant and unaffected as both of their tones throughout the conversation. But he detached his phone from his ear for a moment asking the caller to hold.
"Do you need a ride?" He asked without eagerness or reluctance in his voice.
"No! No! I have my car." She replied before walking out in the same tone.

*

It had been five month - fine long months since she had been to Delhi. 'Long' for that's what it felt like to her. She was not even sure that she lived those three days or it was just another daydream of her that felt so real. Not that Ipshita thought of those three days with any deeper concern than she should.
It happened.
But that didn't mean that it would change anything for her, or her life would stop there. Vehemently realist Ipshita Roy Choudhury's life was like a mast of a ship, no amount of turbulence of storm could flex it until she wanted. And the Delhi chapter she had put and buried deep down where her daydreams and fairy tale belonged in her ever so disciplined realist mind.
Hence like an uncrooked river course, her life was turning pages in the familiar exact way it used to.


Returning to her desk Ipshita dove back into the work she had gone pausing to meet Abhijit. She logged in her laptop while undoing the wrapper of her sandwich and start working her mouth, brain, hands and eyes - as she needed to.
Her trance broke when Rounak, a colleague of hers put a down a coffee cup on her desk.
"In any way, you will get the promotion  RoyChoudhury, stop giving us stress more than you should." He chuckled.
"I am just doing my work Sharma if you get your mind out of your flirtatious manifesto involving all the ladies in the building and do the same - you won't be stressed!" She replied shooting him a smile before sipping the coffee and then mused pointing the liquid "by the way you are a lifesaver do you know that?"
"Hey, now who's flirting?"
"Not me." She chirped before diving back to work again.


Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months running through the same schedule.


***


"I coloured my hair!"  Hrittika beamed leaning over Ipshita's cubicle partition.
"It's brown!" Raising her eyes from her computer Ipshita shot a bored glance towards her best friend who was also her colleague.
"Duh! So? Brown highlight."
"There lies a difference Riti!" withdrawing her eyes to the laptop screen in front of her Ipshita sighed.
"Colouring is colouring! Don't you colour shame me, woman!"
"Never! But I didn't realise you will be excited to highlight it brown! Come on Durgapuja is coming, go crazy!"
"Like?"
"Like - blue!"
"Oh yeah! You do that!"
"I would if I could." Ipshita bubbled and the getting her hand behind her neck brought her hair in front. "Just, I don't think Ma will let me neither will baba!"
"Well, you should not either." Her best friend chirped touching her shinning long thick black hair, "I would not even think about changing anything about it if I had hair like you I swear!" Hrittika blabbered, unnoticing the restless eagerness and envy with which Ipshita was looking back at her. She could not do what her best did with so ease. It was not like she could not, or like her parents would kill her, but she rather won't. She liked her hair the way it was.

But then there was a thing. The thing inside her. It was a thing, for she would not think of it as a human or part of her. It's a someone - being. Someone or something inside her, she knew as the destruction. That being would lash out now and then just as it was doing it right now. Ipshita to some extent feared that thing for she feared it would destroy every single corner of peace in her. This thing was not as good as her, as humble as her, as patient as her, as obedient as her - it was rebellious, stubborn - very very stubborn. It did not know how to understand her situation, her parents - it would call her hypocrite, imposter, liar.
She was not all those things! She was not raised the way this thing inside her wanted her to behave. She refused to listen to it and shut it up but she realised this thing was getting restless now. It was getting ready, pumping its power to dominate her clam, gentle, sweet, golden girl nature.
Just as right now this thing was peering at Hrittika's guts while calling herself spinless and making her think about colouring her hair blue.
No! She didn't want it to be blue! She loved her black straight long hair flowing till her butt.
Ipshita heaved a sigh as the being calmed inside her. Running her figures through Riti's hair she smiled "you are looking beautiful though." In reply Riti beamed, carrying on her rant about how she planned to style it through the four days of the festival.


*


A few days later at one evening just before the puja celebration, Abhijit's family knocked on the door of the RoyChoudhurys with hands full of gifts for them. It was tradition the two families maintained like an I uttered ritual since the boy and the girl of both the families formed a relationship. They would exchange gifts, smile, chatted and laughed while dreaming and planning for a day when the two families would officially tie in a knot of relations "more than the friendship" they shared.
As usually, the Roychoudhurys and Abhijit's family chatted, laughed and savoured dinner like every year. Everything seemed very familiar, routined and practised to everyone until Mrs Devnath, Abhijit's mother said something in her delightful manner that made Ipshita spellbound and then made her sit up straight.
The lunch was in the course of the desert when Mrs Devnat coined up the matter, first looking at Ipshita longingly with a smile and then looking at her mother to say, "Mrs Roychoudhury we were thinking, as you know Abhi will be sent Dubai next year and he is not sure if he will be back very soon. So we were thinking why not we make these two love birds tie the knots before that. I mean they are already twenty- six. What do you say!"
After that, all Ipshita could remember her mother squealing in joy saying that's exactly what she had in mind, and was talking about with Shuvro and also how good it would be for Ipshita's profession too. She saw her father flabbergasted for a moment but then he joined her delightfully.
Both the parents started squealing in joy within a moment poking the two offspring of them in question.
Ipshita took a glance of Abhijit, she didn't understand what he was thinking, but just saw him to shot a smile at his parents before gulping some water.
She didn't understand how to react looking at the joyous gleaming faces of the parents but she realised the thing inside crawling up inside her, in the process of covering all of her. Her heart started a drumroll inside her throat as she heard the thing inside her hissing loudly in the back of her mind, "twenty-four! Not twenty-six! Twenty - four, Ipshita, you are twenty-four!!!"...

So here was the part. Please VOTE! and COMMENT!!!...