Meera

Episode 02

Sahana! An elegant janya raga of Harikamboji in carnatic music, and one of the most favorite ragas of every vakkeyakaara and rasika.

And that's what draws a parallel to Sahana Vishwanathan Iyer, a daddy's little princess from Palakkad - Elegant, calm and beautiful like the raga Sahana! A chellam to everyone at home! Her appearances had every aspect of a typical Keralite Palakkad brahmin and her vocabulary, with the fillers like aei, ohh, ahh, would make it easy for anyone to identify her poorveegam. To be precise, I would describe her to be a pucca replica of Tripurasundari from the film Michael Madhana Kama Rajan for her appearances and dialect!

Sahana was the first girl child in her family to be educated. With a graduation in commerce already in hand from Stella Mary's, she was an aspiring woman chartered accountancy student, lucky perks of being daddy's little princess. She had enrolled for classes at the Institute for Intermediate.

Being born in Palakkad and brought up in Mylapore, she had a sound knowledge of carnatic music and was trained properly in vocal music - sarali varisai, jandai varisai, dhattu varisai, alankaram, swarajathi, jathiswaram, varnam, krithi, keerthanai, thillana, and what not. Every Navarathri festival would go waste in many households of the agraharam if it doesn't have Sahana's performance in their kolu, and so she would perform in atleast a couple of the houses every day on all 9 days of the festival. And being a devout of Karpagambal, she would prefer singing Karpagamae in Madhyamavathi and Karpagavalli Nin Porpadhangal, a Ragamalika atleast once a day. Her pronunciation of words and the sangadhis in any song she sings were everyone's favorite.

And fortunately or unfortunately, she has been only once or twice to Raghav's house so far for their Kolu though their families knew each other as her father Vishwanatha Shastrigal was also a sanskrit scholar at the Sanskrit college and a famous josiyar in and around Mylapore. And all those times, Raghav would be in his violin classes at Mandaiveli and so he has not met this devathai so far in his life.

For the first time, on their way to the classes, they meet each other in 29C. But that's not how they begun talking to each other. They just met in the bus. Since they didn't know each other, they didn't bother to speak. Who would speak to strangers in a bus, that too a boy and a girl!?

But fate decided other ways to unite them.

2 April 1993

Being the month of April which falls just before the May exams, the Institute had its last series of mock test scheduled and it was Costing that day, in the morning. Everyone outside the institute hall were busy rushing through their books and notes with a hope to score a little premium out of what they read at that point of time. Nah! It doesn't work out that way as you tend to forget whatever you are thorough with.

Raghav and Sahana occupied two adjacent benches, and both were busy in their prayers. While Sahana was praying sincerely to Karpagambal, Raghav was busy praying to Venkatachalapathy, who we all call with love and affection as Venky! The invigilator had arrived with the bundles of question papers and answer papers to be distributed to the students, while Raghav was still in his prayers, and he heard someone calling him from his side, iss iss, which is the signal that one gives out to the other when they need a favour or when they want to ask or tell something secretly, including the answers. Raghav urgently finished his prayers and turned towards the direction from which the call was made.

Yes, you got it right. It was Sahana. It was the first look he had on her, and he was immediately flattened. For a few seconds, he was on Cloud Nine. CA, Intermediate, Costing - all were immaterial to him now. What was material to him was the sight of a beautiful young woman by his side. He was lost in his dreams.
(How could one immediately start romancing in the dreams is a question which is kept unanswered for yugas together, leave alone centuries!)

Hearing her call him again, he came crashing down to reality. He realised he was appearing for the mock test and that she kept on calling him again for some reason. He looked at her again and noticed she looked panicked and was in need of some help.

"Hey! What happened? You look disturbed?"
"Hi, I just forgot to get an additional pen and my pen isn't writing. I am concerned how I would write the test. Do you have a spare pen that I could borrow?"
"Hmmm! That's the matter! I always carry a good number of pens with me, and luckily I've got 1 more spare with me."
"If you don't mind, can you spare that pen so that I can finish the test and while going out, I'll get you a new pen instead"
"Hey! That's never an issue. Here's the pen! All the best. I'll wait outside the room after the test if I finish first or you please wait outside if you finish first. Drink some water, cool yourself down and start writing the test. The invigilator is here with the question paper"
"Yeah, thank you, thank you so much. Best of luck to you and see you after the test"

This is how fate had decided to strike a convo between the two. They say, emergency situations bring people together. And that's how Raghav and Sahana had their first talk.

The test was over by 1'o clock and Raghav was one among the first to finish. So he waited outside the hall. Luckily, the next test that was scheduled that afternoon was postponed to the next day as there was power failure and since the backup was not sufficient to power enough lights and fans for such a big crowd. You know how Madras climate feels from March to June. Sahana came out a little later and she looked relieved. They kept walking towards the bus stop from the Institute and they had their first open conversation.

"Hey! How was the test? Hope you did it well"
"Hey hi,ummm"
"Raghav, Raghav Chakrapani! Nice meeting you miss..."
"Sahana! Sahana Vishwanathan! Yeah! Nice meeting you! And thank you, thank you so much for helping me by lending your pen. I did the test well! By the way, I'll get you a new one when we meet tomorrow for the next test. Or here's the change for it."
"Hey it's ok. You need not give me anything in return. It's just a help when you were in need. By the way I think I could spot 29C coming. I'll have to keep going. See you tomorrow."
"Hey. That's the bus I too have to board. Come let's go together!"

The word together took a different meaning and their lives had already started crossing each other. Little did they remember their past meeting in the bus. And little did they know the fact that their parents had a good friendship between themselves. But a new journey with Raghav and Sahana being Humsafar to each other had already commenced.

And this new journey definitely had a destination! What was that!?