Uncharted Trails

The Lonely Shores

It's just that time of the year when all friends meet and Prerna was missing that one friend who was her world. Sitting by the waves on the beach front house in Mumbai. It's been some years since she has admitted to herself her life was never going to change. But that doesn’t mean that she will hold other people to herself. Being someone’s trap or shackle was never her thing. She herself had and will always break any shackles that could make her a burden on someone. 

There’s nothing new, is there? he has always been the centre of her world. That one friend who befriended the naughtiest girl in the class. It was that one person who was the reason she could never get tired of her life. That one friend who gave wings to her and her dreams. Whose smile is the one she opened her eyes to every morning and the last thing she prayed for every night. She shifted to the sand and sat on it. Her kurta got all muddy and wet from the wet sand but she didn’t mind. It's been 6 years since she has seen him, talked to him. But she checked on him every single day. She has created false accounts where she could at least see how he was faring. His friends, his girlfriend, his articles, and the papers he has been submitting. She didn’t understand much of his inventions in Automation, Artificial Intelligence and IOT but she absorbed each bit of information on him like a parched desert sand. 

Prerna Sharma has been reduced to an obsessive stalker. And she closed her eyes in shame and despair. Actually, she had no right to all this, no right to him. She was just his father’s friend’s daughter. Infact a daughter of an employee whom Basu’s had adopted after her father’s death. But because Mohini Basu was upset with her being friends with her Son she had admitted her to the school hostel with a bit of more fees because she obviously couldn’t  manage on her. She was after all limited to her wheelchair since the accident that killed the whole of her family when she was just 12 years old. But Anurag Basu was one force whom even Mohini Basu couldn’t control. He not only remained friends with her but became everything that was unuttered, unexplained and sometimes not even dreamt off by her. 

That's how Anurag Basu was he made her participate in races, and damn won them too. Made her drunk at the age of 16, dared her to learn self defence and then got beaten up by her. He tripped her in front of teachers and got her punished like everyone else, even fought with the teacher to throw her out of the class for ideating a diwali bomb explosion in the class. He made her field and bowl in a cricket match. He even made her propose to her first crush. Life around him had been so crazy that she had forgotten how life should be for a crippled person. If she would have asked for any favours for beings crippled, he would box her ears and would tell her to get her ass off from her wheelchair and do it herself. He was always pushing her beyond her limits. He was the force behind her career and the fact that she lived alone. 

Once in the college one of the boys tried to molest her in the bathroom. Anurag didn't beat him for her, as everyone had thought, rather he had abused her in his colourful language and asked her to stop being misish and fight for herself. And she had beaten the crap out of the guy with Anurag’s belt. That incident had taught her that she was capable of defending herself and her dignity. Had given her the pride after she felt violated.  

“Your limbs don't define you samjhi, phir kabhi koi ladka tujhe kamzor samjhe aur tujhe galat tarike se haath lagaye toh jaan se maar dena, baki main sambhal lunga, samjhi ke nahi. Aur kisine tere sath galat saluk kiya aur tu roi, toh dekh tu phir. College ke gate pe pehle tujhe ulta tangunga aur phir Uss...Bugger ki main....”

He made her cheerleader for the football team he played for in college. It was as if , he changed the way she lived, thought, behaved, dressed everything. She had to participate in anything and everything that normal girls also didnt do. Paragliding, bungee jumping, Off roading a car with a brick on the accelerator, and then flying in a hot air balloon. He had gifted her, her first car which she still drove...it was custom made for her. He gifted her a diamond tiara on her 18th Birthday. Made her participate in ramp walk and then took her to a night of gaming. How life looked before Anurag Basu she can’t even remember. 

He made his first million during college days by making a robotic body support which could help a person in wheelchair stand up and roam around like a normal person without any other support and had dedicated it to her. And then came that night when they had fought, rather she had deliberately fought with him. He had an offer to study at MIT and Carnegie Mellon and yet he had decided not to go. And then she had to take that drastic measure to alienate him from herself. She had created the fiasco and made him leave. But today was their day, Friendship day and in a city she lived in for the last few years still seemed like a stranger.  She had left kolkata because she couldn't walk on the roads, cross the local panipuri stall, look at the Howrah Bridge, get on the tram or even go to her favourite college street to buy books, without going crazy. She had several times in the middle of the road stood and had lost the idea of everything, where was she supposed to go? Why was she waiting at a certain pavement? Why did she buy Mishti doi and couldn’t eat a bite or started crying in great heaving sobs? Why she started to hate few songs? Or why she couldnt stand the rains?

She has been living in limbo, trapped in the moment Anurag had left her house in rage breaking her phone, laptop and the photo frame that held a collage of their pics at different times. Sometimes she felt, she wont live ever again? She will remain trapped in his memories always, and that scared her too. She didnt want him to find her, and destroy the rest of the Prerna too. Because if he ever came in front of her, she would just shatter in front of him. 

P.S. This is a short story of few chapters i have written as just a gift for all of you sweet Readermily. Hope you enjoy this one too...  would love your votes...comments...discussions and follows as always... A Very Happy Friendship Day to you all lovely ppl💖💖💋💋🙏😻😻🤗😘😘