A Long Story

She saw a missed call from an unknown number. Called back to ask who.

'Hello, koun bol rahen hain?'
'Aap koun?'
'Aap ne call kiya tha, aap ko pata hoga main koun!'
'But abhie to aapne call kiya hai'
'Very funny!'

She hung up!

She got a call again. She girded her loins...She will show him some fun now.

'What is it that you want?'
'Pehle pehchaan koun?'
'What rubbish!'

She was about to disconnect out of sheer disgust,out of her apathy towards people who trouble innocent girls via phone.
Then she heard something like this

'Arrey main yaar...kamaal hai...tu to ekdum bhool hi gayi!'

Her heart missed a beat. Till that day she had called back every unknown-number-missed-caller begging God it should be him.
Was it him? Him? Him?

'Koun?' she whispered...

'Main yaar...(we keep the first name a secret)...(we also keep the last name under covers...)'

Time stopped. Her palms went sweaty, forehead was burning. She didn't know whether to be happy...or nervous...or impersonal..
Her breathing took a pause...

It took a minute for her to gather herself and behave as if she had never expected him to call... It was raining and thundering
outside. That didn't matter..nothing mattered...she was carried into a land faraway. That moment she had everything she wanted.

Wonder why he always called up when there was a storm outside...there were many story summer afternoons then...Could be because he
had nothing better to do...

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Days passed by. Storms went by. He didn't call again...

Her heart learned to cry again. It writhed in anguish again. It tore itself apart into pieces and pieces. Her heart brooded
about the futility of further existence.

But look at her mind. The mind thought of exploiting her plight. It squeezed her pain to make words out of it. Her mind made
her write and write consoling her that she would be able to come out of it one day is she wrote it all out! But she never
overcame anything, she could never wipe out the occurrence of that phone call two years ago...that stormy summer afternoon.

The heart was like a naive orphaned child. How shrewd could her mind be...how selfish...how cruel...how...

She wondered how the two of them, her heart and mind coexisted between the boundaries of the same body...

Her heart was so much like herself...and her mind, it was so much like that people...people who know how to churn a name
out of every exploitable source...

She wrote about her pain...people read. She accumulated accolades... Her mind liked it all.

Did anyone ask her heart? The ovation and the praise did nothing to better its situation. It writhed in anguish forever.