AbihGya SS ~ Frozen

Chapter 5: Such A Small World - Part 1

Sometimes, it so happens that some faces stick to your memory with super glue, and how ever you try, they keep flashing before your eyes whenever you shut them. Over time, these faces sink back to the periphery of your mind - they don't disturb you, but whenever and however long the gap maybe, when you try recalling such faces. You would be surprised to see the clarity with which you remember every detail. It had been five years, yet one such face haunted me, especially the last time I saw her - sitting by my side inside my car, a fragile frame, a pair of red bloodshot eyes, lips slightly parted and a look of painful amazement plastered on the face.

The UNESCO India Chapter had been approaching me for almost three years now, for joining hands with them as their goodwill ambassador. I was always interested in the project, but somehow I could never make myself available for the same. This year however, after not renewing a few endorsement contracts I managed to make time to fit them in my date schedule.

It was at the press conference for unveiling UNESCO India's goodwill ambassador, I was sitting in my make-up van and rehearsing my speech, when one spot came to me to take my speech sheet, he told me that the speech needed to be proof read and approved by the team before the press meet - though I was reluctant to accept any change in the speech in the last moment, I agreed and gave it to the boy. He returned back in fifteen minutes with my speech sheet. I looked at it to see that at the top right corner of my sheet, someone had used a red ink to write "Approved." I scanned through the entire sheet to see there were pen marks in two places, one was a punctuation rectification and another was a spelling rectification. I was irritated at the corrections. Here I was verbally addressing the crowd and they were humiliating me with grammatical checks? I was infuriated, I wanted to meet the team.

My manager finally managed to get hold of the panel member who had approved my speech some ten minutes before the press conference and brought her to my van. I heard a knock on the door, followed by manager's voice telling me, "Ma'am is here". I had my back towards them.

"So Ma'am, if you could enlighten me why the last minute speech approval, grammar check and spell check was necessary when the speech was verbal? It was a cheap trick of humiliation played against me. I will take this to higher authorities." I promised.

"Well, you can take whatever action you want Mr. Mehra, but speech approval is a UNESCO protocol and the grammar and spell check happened out of my habit, I can't ignore spelling or grammatical errors, it was not initiated to dishonour you." Came a firm reply, but for me it was the voice that blew my mind away. I remembered this voice with utmost clarity - the last time it spoke to me, it had asked me if I would still break up with her, if she had sex with me.

I froze. After five years. Prags.

I slowly turned around, she was standing there right before me, wearing a business suit, hands folded in front, hair cropped short, falling upto her shoulder. The only thing that remained the same was her big beautiful brown doe eyes and her obnoxious glasses.

I stared at her, waiting for her to show some sign of recognition. But she simply stood there waiting for my response. But before I could reply, my manager spoke on my behalf, solving the issue prudently. And then she spoke.

"Fine, if we are done here, I better get going, I have more relevant issues to take care of before the conference begins." And she turned around and left.

Had it been anyone other than her, calling my query irrelevant, all hell would break loose, but it was Prags - I let it pass. I stood there numbed by her indifference.

As it turned out later that she was a culture researcher at UNESCO and also the head of the panel that introduced me that evening. Sitting next to her after five years, felt both good and bad in a unique way - good because she still smelled the same, of dry rose perfumes, it brought back very old memories. And bad because, looking at her, even I found it difficult to believe we knew each other in the past.