There was this guy. And this girl. The guy is like the heart of his family and the girl is perfection. Beauty and compassion, together. The girl is the maternal niece of the boy’s paternal aunt. So once every year, during their childhood, this girl used to visit the boy’s place and the two were like two peas in a pod during what felt like a very short time.
Then when the two were 18, the girl came for a brief stay at this boy’s place and it was then that the boy developed a special fondness for her, he felt love, or his understanding at that age of that feeling, deemed it love. The girl too reciprocated the same, first through her eyes, then through her smile and then by the manner she exuded when she was around him. A new world came alive in both when they were in each other’s presence.
This temerity of the two young kids in the house was noticed by the elders. They loved the boy..well because he was a boy and hence decided to ignore his role in the whole affair but insulted the girl a lot for the same, so much so that she decided to never to come to the place again. Years passed by and the boy moved out of his town for higher studies and kind of moved on from the whole episode. Last he heard of this girl, she was to get married and since he was not in the same frame of mind anymore, he felt happy for her.
Five or six years later, the girl came to visit her aunt at the boy’s place again and the two were face-to face again. But the two neither talked nor even mustered enough courage to share a glance with each other, which earlier used to be the primary mode of communication between the two. The boy wanted to tell her that he was sorry for what had happened to her or to tell his mom and his aunt that they had wronged her and that she deserved an apology. But he could do neither. Why? He still does not have an answer. He felt he had to live with this regret for the rest of his life.
Then one random Sunday morning his uncle was travelling to some town to settle a family dispute and he thought, being the eldest son of the family it was his duty to accompany his uncle. So he did. Little did he knew that this was the town where the girl lived. After his uncle was done with the work, the two went to the place where the girl lived to say hello to their relatives there. The ghosts of his past came back to life again with the two getting a bit uncomfortable in each other’s presence. Somehow this time he managed to crack a colloquial joke which the two had shared in the past. And the ice was broken. As she giggled over it, he experienced a sigh of relief which he can never manage to explain through words.
As he left the place, she came forward and said good bye- a good bye which had come six years late but still felt apt. He acknowledged it by blinking his eyes. And the two made peace with their past in that moment.
And so life moves on and they are both in love with it once again.
To Aniket Pathak, the most fascinating part of living is being able to tell a story, at times by being a part of it, at times by living it and at times being privileged enough to know it. All these stories are nothing but a collection of moments of varied emotions, of ultimate self discoveries and above all moments of infinite possibilities. To the world however, Aniket is a student and his blog Embraced Moments is where he is the book that he reads, the song that he sings, the music that he listens to, the movie that he watches…the moment that he lives.