Hamesha, Yours!

-41-

Aliya walked up to Nandini an apology clouding her face,

"I'm..."

Her voice trailed into silence and she sat next to  Nandini unknown that besides the lay an a known grave that reflected her story. After all, beneath the dusty layers of dirt of an unvisited grave from 5 months no one would figure out the letters

R. M. U. R. T. H. Y.  Nandini's finger brushed the engraved ever so lightly.

"It's life Aliya. One would always go, any one would, everyone would when they have learnt all what life had to teach them! Harshad had learnt all a bit too soon, was he this smart since school?"

A smile broke on Aliya's tear stained face, lost in the memory, she replied,

"Indeed! Bhai was smart! Very smart! A scholar, you know! That was where Band of Brother's came along- Bhai, me, Manik and Dhruv.

We were all very awkward in school.
Having a rammed up house, school for was an escape for him and he wanted to make sure it was an escape for me as well. A place where I could be me, a place where I could breathe and grow so that I was able to survive the screams of the mom and dad. He protected me from a young age but let me be free and feel my heart to the fullest like any fairytale so that the heartbroken mom and dad showed a part of the reality. He was emotionally smart, may be thanks to mom and dad and what they showed us. But, that's not how we came together,"

Aliya folded her legs on the ground and rested her hands on her little chin. Nandini leaned in intrigued by the story. She had known band of brothers and fab 5, but at two very different stages of their life. She knew the culmination, the reason but not how it all began. She was lost in that moment, for Nandini, it all seemed as if she had found a lost friend back, a confider. A Harshad, she found in Aliya.

" I was an year younger in school from Harshad, was interested in music and like any junior school cliche, had a little crush on Manik and Dhruv, the seniors who at awkward times, secretly played in some great music. In my fairytale, Dhruv and Manik were etched as the smart, popular guys who were great music lads. But, them playing music secretly at odds times when I would wish to sneak in to the music room never made sense. The naive me never wanted to make any sense of it, until one day when looking for Bhai I reached the seniors hallway during lunch break. My timid fluttering heart was half looking for Bhai just to give him a notebook that was left with me but was more than ever concentrated to find Manik and Dhruv.

I walked down the hallways, in search of them first thinking that I'll bump into them, ask them where Bhai was, and then reach Bhai whilst potentially talking to them. But, have such childish school fantasies ever kissed reality?,"

Aliya laughed as tears bubbled her eyes again.
Nandini wasn't sure if Aliya's eyes leaked in happiness of the memory or on the mere fact that it was now a memory of a memory.

"Much opposite to what I was expecting, I found Manik and Dhruv beaten and broken. I rushed to them, remember asking them what had happened but they were too distraught. Knowing what to do in that empty hallway, I handed them my water bottle and little lunch that I had been carrying, ran down those hallways I don't know screaming for Bhai, I was told later.

It was such a haze but I remember, Bhai banged into me. I mumbled something and the next thing I knew we were back to that corridor end where Manik and Dhruv lay. Manik was tending to Dhruv. We helped them up, brought them to the meds place and there was the first brick of Band of Brothers.

Later that night, we reached home and by that time I had realized the incidence with my little crushs on the line had yielded into a little scene with unexplained hysteria. Bhai being the smart one and having learnt from mom and dad, had an inkling on what rolled in school that day and I had a little inkling of what tsunami would rush in once home. There was no escape and the great "brother and sister" talk took place.