An unfinished conversation

I was fidgeting with my school bag in the crowded 7.30 am bus on May 15, 1999 when I met Rupa for the first time. I was standing and glancing nonchalantly out of the window when a voice interrupted my thoughts. “You can hand over your bag.” the voice said. It was a girl near the window seat. She was smiling at me. I removed my bag and handed it to her.

She must have been around 24 or 25 .She had shoulder length light brown hair and deep brown eyes. She was fair, actually beautiful. “You are Baruah sir’s son na?” she asked. I was surprised. I muttered a “yes” and a “how do you know?” She replied “Well my dad and your dad are colleagues you see. I have seen you before on this bus."

I was beginning to like this girl with deep brown eyes and an appealing smile playing on her lips. She was asking me a lot of questions and I realized I was replying with great ease. We chatted animatedly and before I knew, it was time to get down. I got down from the bus and waved to her. She waved back. We were friends. And I was in love.

We would always meet in the bus. The bus was our means of communication, the medium of our friendship. She worked in an advertising agency and we shared a common interest for poetry and art. The bus ride was not too long and usually there would be lots of unfinished things to talk about when I got down. I didn’t mind as it gave me something to talk about the next day, sit near her and gaze into her eyes. I would show my poems to her and she would show me designs which she had made for her agency. I loved her with all the passion of a fifteen year old but she was a dream for me and like all dreamers I woke up too one day.

I lost her on a rainy evening on September 28, 1999, the day, she got married. I must have had a trifle too much of honey for I was perfectly fine till evening up till the time came to go to her wedding, a matter which puzzled my parents to no end.

After her marriage I met her only once, in a restaurant, with her husband. I gave my most sincere fake smile and said that I would visit her at the earliest. My lie was never tested and I never had to visit her house. She died in childbirth. But then we all "move on" and only at times I am reminded of her, a girl with the deepest brown eyes and the most appealing smile in the world.