The Orchid Garden ✔

Her perfume still intoxicates me. Her golden hair still seems to fly on my face every time I feel the sun rays blind my sight. Her voice still sends the chilly sparks down my spine.

And her piercing eyes still haunts me at night. Just that though, I don't get to breathe in the air we once shared on the same land.
And as the convention goes, all epics start in medias res...

Summer, 15th April 1959. Calcutta, India.

I was a ward of the 'Borobabu' at the Bonnerjea Household.  Aristocratic Zamindar by blood and enterprising businessmen by profession, the people in the household were namely the well-known faces in the city; details of which may apparently violate privacy.

It was the Bengali New Year and the Household prepared themselves for the festivities of the evening that was to unfold.

My education reached its dead end and my stationary was taken away: some sold, some discarded. It wasn't that much of a festival for me. Still, I said nothing.

The young daughter of Sir Edmund Scott Watson, Miss Ursula Rosalind Watson, was on her way to visit the celebrations of the native Indians on the Bengali New Year. She was well-known for her promising future in Field of Arts.

On the face value, one took me for a young (a fragile age of nineteen to be precise), unmarried, home-schooled female; and not to forget, penniless.

Looking back at some decisions in my life then seems absolutely juvenile; even relentless at times.

Regardless of what I had to hear daily because of my compromising situation, I said nothing.

I met her over the table of sweets when she said, "The sugar in here just might be the replacement of caffeine, an alternative of getting high at the stake of a few pounds of flesh".

I beamed at her and said nothing.

She carried the rainbow with her: painting the world beautiful with those dainty fingers grasping on to the brush and flicking it over your eyes as a magic wand, her temperament seemed to form a myriad of colours blended on a palette.

It was a week after that when Ursula was mentioned again. A package had been delivered for me.

It was a painting of an orchid garden and a tag attached loosely on the frame, that read,
"I painted the picture you sketched".

Soon it was followed by a mail informing that I've been accepted into a University in Stanford as a Literature Major on reference from Sir Watson. The collection of poems I composed was credited as extraordinary.

Faces that looked at me then held emotions of guilt, pride, joy and envy. I did drop a few tears but I said nothing.
Summer 15th April 2019.

Never did I think that on a fateful night over the table of sweets, Ursula would come across the discarded pages of poetry I composed and that she'd decide to be the angel.

I also didn't know that six months into our friendship, she would breathe her last in my arms and reveal that she's been fighting with leukaemia ever since birth. I said nothing that day; I didn't have to say anything to her either.

Because since the day I met her, she knew I was mute.