REMINISCENCE OF A DEPARTED GIRL

Although it is not easy to live in the ruins of past yet it someone relates you with some aspects of life. These facets of time can’t be lived through but nostalgia. An epoch of such a sort hurls entire capsule of the brain stained chains of memories.

Same way, I am obsessed a lot of the thought stuck in the realms of the memoirs. Such accounts of life entangle me under the deep depressions of reminiscence of a departed girl.

Pretty were the days of childhood on the dawn of teenage. I was a little frail looking boy of fair complexion. We lived in a wide village amid the immense spreads of the valley. We had cattle at home to cater as it is a traditional setup of all the residents of green and grassy countryside in Kashmir. 

I was in my early years of teenage when my father brought home a maidservant to cater the cattle. Her name was Menasha and she was of my age with a lot of beauty blessings. Far from usual behavior of the girls of her age, she was quite an outspoken and intrepid girl.

Soon she became familiar with the routines of our house and also the people living there. More than else all, she became my acquaintance too early as she was of my age.

The acquaintance turned into friendship in a few days of her stay at us. I felt a specific charm in meeting her. We began sitting a lot and managing a plenty of talks on finding a chance of our company.

The spell of friendship was at the high tides of its flow. She used to remain in the depths of my thoughts even in the school. Whenever I happened to return from school, I would go out in hurry in the pastures for getting her camaraderie.

The emotions of adolescence got momentum with the tones of heart to throb the strings of mutual love passions. The affection appetite soon turned us into a loving couple of teenagers. We had impetus of liking for one another. In a humid linkage of love fondness, we could not distinguish that whether it was a hub of love or just a track of friendship.

With in the periods of five months, we were near enough to enjoy the sincere bonds of devoted links. It was our luck that we were living in the same house where we would find many occasions of intense affability.

Now it had become my routine to accompany her far in the meadows everyday. I used to come back in an hasten way from the school daily, threw my bag on the study table, ate my meal and ran up to the pastures to join Menasha in the meadows. The moments of our union on such a flower abundant lush green land had focus of all the charms of early youth.

When our mutual interactions grew to the limits, my parents abandoned me from visiting the pastures so frequently. We were wise enough to prevent the future aspersions. To keep our love free of suspicions, we managed a reduction in the daily duration of our company. Now we would meet together more at home than the outside places. However still we would pass the whole long Sunday playing and talking together in the vastness of the plain pastures.

The intensity in the routines of love or friendship, what you may call it, had on its rise with every passing day. Many occurrences of our lovely company occurred in those rejoicing hours of life. Many of these are worth to remember. To concise the pattern of this script, only a few happenings of optimum importance are reviewed in the following passages.

She would present me many tiny but lovely gifts. The gifts included embroidery as hankies, silky bracelets of beads and hand woven socks etc. Once she stitch a rose like design on my front pocket with such a skill that on its back it read ‘LOVE’. Often she would force me to visit the backyard garden and there she plucked flowers to gift me as tokens of love, sincerity and nearness.

Once in the long grassy fields, a snake took bite of me at the right ankle. I cried with the sudden pain and fear. Menasha came running from a long distance. On knowing the reasons of my cries, she hurriedly muffled the leg from its middle with her scarf. Then she made a cut and pressed my flesh from around the biting place to run away the poison contaminated blood. It relieved me much until reaching home and being served with an antidote by our family doctor.

Menasha was a good swimmer by birth. Once in the early days of spring, I was taking bath in the running river with some friends. Menasha was looking my somersaults sitting on a side rock. On the emergence of a strange idea, I pretended myself to be drowned. When she heard my shriek, she abruptly jumped into the river and drag me to the banks by cuffing her soft arms around my body. Then on the exposure of my mischief, she tapped my cheeks with delicate slaps of her trendy hands.  

It so happened that once I was engaged in a fight on occurrence of a conflict with my cousin Hassan. He was a sturdy young man who pushed me down and sat on me chest. As Menasha looked that she became furious. She ran briskly to rescue me of the rogue. She kicked him off and beat him much with the whip in her hands. She consoled me and took a kiss of my forehead. That kissing pose is precious to remember for whole of my life. With the rejoicing bits of her kiss, I forgot all the pains and worries of the fight.

The fortune of love was at good pace for us. We were living together being a lucky love couple. We had many chances to make promises of life long affection and weaving a net of dream driven passions. A long duration of three years became a period of love rejoicing days and we left no stone unturned to avail every bit of it.

Menasha would keep me on her attractive attachment on her everyday purposes and practices. She used to fetch fruits and other eatables for me whenever she would visit her parents. I also got many chances to accompany Menasha to her home. She ever strived her best to serve me with the best available dishes. It all reflect her sincerity and devotion for me.

We would sat together for long hours. We walked together through vast grassy fields hands in hand. We also talked out many charms and chases of our favorite concerns. We exchanged many gifts and so many words of love. In merry and marvelous tones, we proposed each other tto marry in near future. We knitted a paradise of our own dreams which were full of sentiments of togetherness.

The era comprised man instances of ideal events on love and lust. It pertained to the imagery of future existence. We planned a complete married life of us at this very stage of intense love. We imagined for an house to be built on the high side of river amid rose and lily gardens. We even suggested the names of our children too earlier. We sketched a metamorphic gay life for us.

From the blue then there came a catastrophe. There happened the worst accident of our life to distort it all. It occurred so sudden that perhaps I was lost altogether.  

Menasha was at her home in the other village on Sunday. At noon she climbed an apple tree to gather apples. In her struggle to collect apples from the apex branches, her feet slipped. She could not keep her safe from falling down and struck with a steep rock on the ground.

She lost her senses and soon her parents to shift to the hospital. As soon as I got the news of her tragic fall, I ran madly towards the hospital but she was dead long before I reached there.

I wept bitterly over the most precious loss of my life. I was in pain of passions but all those woes or wails could not back to life. I was deprived of my affection coping paradise. All the objectives of rest of my life became extinct. I had been divested blooming life much before to be lived in.