Friday, May 14, 2010

After a long wait

When she was six, one day she came to know that her father has got a transfer near the border area of their country and she and her mother has to stay with her grandparents in a small village for next one year. She was little confused and asked several questions but still she did not really understand what that means. She loved to stay in the village, the paddy fields, the big pond, the fishermen coming every Sunday, the special sweets made by her grandmother, jars of raw mango pickles and the elaborate way of making them by the village women, the stories she heard from her grand father every evening after finishing her homework in front of a lantern, she learned lots of tricks and fun things from her uncle and aunts who were not much older than her. She saw her mother always busy in the kitchen and several other things which are needed to be cared in a big joint family. Her mother would only get time to sit with her in the evening to help her with her homeworks and little chit-chat about her whole day at school. This was a different life for that little girl than what she was used to of before.

She was happy with her new kind of days, but whenever she saw a butterfly fluttering around, she saw the first drops of rain falling on the pond in front of their house, she saw kites in the sky, she saw other children of the village holding their father's finger while going to buy a toffee in the village shop she used to feel the absence of her father very strongly. She used to write letters to her father or rather draw as in that age she did not know spellings of many words, so she used to draw pictures of that butterfly she saw, rain falling over the pond, the big fish that was caught by the fisherman. Her mother always made sure that all her letters were posted and reach her father. She used to get big letters form her father as well, no not with pictures but with descriptions of the place where he was living, about the clouds floating so near to him that he thought he would try to catch them in a poly packet after she join him there, about the mountain ranges he could see from his window and how they look like a giant lying on the ground. That little girl used to love those letters, she could not read them herslf as they were written in joint letters, so she used to wait patiently for her mother to finish her work and they both used to read  them lying on their beds during lazy afternoons.

After many months passed like this, one day when the little girl returned from her school, she saw her grand parents, uncle, aunts and mother all are talking very happily, and as she entered one of them said "Go upstairs there is a surprise for you". She hesitated a bit as her uncles and aunts were expert in playing tricks, so she looked at her mother's face for truth. Her mother nodded with a smile and the girl could not miss that special sparkle in her mother's eyes. She ran through the stairs and there she saw her father fresh after a bath, cuticura powder splashed on his shoulders, combing his hairs. As soon as he saw her he took her into his arms, after a tight hug he fumbled her hairs and said you have grown up into a big girl!

Many years have passed in between, that little girl is a mere spectator today. She is watching with a smile on her face, the meeting of another pair of father and his little girl, though they don't write letters but they share their days over phone calls and video chats, and when they met after a long wait, she saw that the daddy took his little girl into his arms, cuddled her tightly, fumbled her hairs and said you have grown up into a big girl!

8 comments:

  1. wonderful................seems like from your own experience.........:)

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  2. one of the best stories

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  3. Well written....reminds me of the re-unions we used to have with our dad when he used to come back after a long time.

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  4. Purono diner kotha mone pore gelo...

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  5. very touching story...

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  6. Thank you everybody for taking time to read this piece.

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  7. superbly written

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