Sanchita was looking at the seats, at the snacks corner and seeping it all in.
This was the part of traveling she liked most.
The strange faces around, in front of whom you can just be an image, any image you want to show, the image of the of person you want to be. May be it is the kind of person you would be if you had your way and not the 100 strings and shackles that bind you. But then those shackles root from your own elements.
Summary, this is the only time when you can live that "You" you always want to look back at you from the mirror.
So Sanchita was making the most of it. She was wearing a cotton brown full sleeved Kurta and black chudidaars with a black chunni. It was complementing her wheatish complexion and the brown kurta was doing well to show case her wavy hair, at the same giving the sober look of sophistication and intellectualism, that she wanted to put across.
Her soft yet full mouth and small but wide eyed gaze added a tinge of innocence to her face.
She was sitting very elegantly in one of the chairs waiting to board her flight to Bangalore.
She got up to buy a cup of coffee. She did not like the coffee as much as the act of buying it, standing beside perfectly strange families or at times an elderly man with a face that reflected years of experience of life and held a promise of giving answers to the questions in her turbulent heart, in a chance conversation struck with him, while waiting for their respective orders, taking in the warm, fresh scent of coffee.
The queue at times also had attractive men with not only looks, but look of intelligence and depth, offering to let her place her order before them, in a show of perfectly gentlemanly behaviour which was so becoming of them. Not that she cared for any of them, or thought this would be the beginning of a love story, but these gestures from them, made her confident about the fact that she deserved to be treated like all women in the world. This consoled her for a moment but started another string of questions within her.
She desperately wished he could be here and see, this is what she she deserved and by ignoring her, this is what he was missing out on. This elegant, good looking, desirable girl.. She had always felt that his series of temporary fancies had always been women who were more attractive, but that's what she was too. The things she liked in herself were invisible to him. She with him was like a Hi end handset in the hands of a Man who knew only how to make calls from a phone.
Today she had left all that behind, or at least this is what she believed. 48hrs ago she had been on a call with him, telling him that she will be going for good. She had half expected that at least this would make him want to see her atleast once. to say Good bye, and when he would see her, she had day dreamed, that he would ask her not to go. not to leave him. She had taken a big chance with her heart. She hoped with all the cells in her heart that he would ask her to meet and knew with every nerve in her brain that he would not.
Still she had played the gamble, one last time, if he wanted her in his life at all or not. She knew she would be shattered when he said no -there was no "if he said no" it was only "when he said NO" as she knew it would be a "NO".
Still the negative in her, that implored her to be the martyr, the good doer, at the cost of making other people guilty; not spelling out sentences on other people's lives, at the cost of making other people feel gnawed at from within, with hate for their own souls at having hurt her; that part of her that simply found more pleasure in sadness if she is able to make other's feel guilty, than she felt in happiness, this part of her prodded her on to place that gamble.
She got her "No" as was expected.
She had felt relived after that "No" though she had not expected that feeling. That was the time she realized again, that it is really liberating to let go. That feeling of lightness stayed with her for some time. Till Today morning, when she readied for the travel and got through the security checkpoints and was now seated with Da Vinci Code in hand and a cup of coffee beside her, enjoying all the attention she was getting from people around because of the image she was able to effect. That is when cognitive dissonance struck her.
The knowledge, that she had never let him see this part if her. If he had seen her thus then may be, who knows ...? Who knows may be she could also have just sat waiting at this very seat while he would have got the coffee for them both, and she would have extended her hands covered with Chudaa (red and white bangles, the sign of a newly married woman) and taken the coffee, while he would have made a statement about the coffee being good or bad, or the flight being on time or late, or some such sort of conversation that she was catching from a newly married couple sitting two or three seats away from her.
She unlocked the screen of her handset, checked, network, messages and checked for missed calls. Switched and switched off her phone, but nothing. There was no sign of his having missed her. of his having tried to contact her.
Next emotion to grip her was loneliness, even Robert Langdon could show some feeling for the lady in all the chasing around and signs and symbolism. Suddenly all she wanted was to walk beside a man, feeling protected or whatever that reassuring feeling is, some one who would look up at her and his eyes would light up. Some one who would know how to appreciate all the features of this advanced handset that she felt she was. Caught up in these thoughts she boarded the bus, that would take her to the flight.
She was.......
Will continue writing after this if you want to know the story of Sanchita further....
"he held out his Visiting Card, it had his name and designation, good enough to feel that he can run a family, but more than that ..."
