Something else

Love, Stuck with a few Platonic Verses

An immaculately sculpted countenance with a definite verve for the ongoing turn of events suddenly refracted my languid eyesight on a focus. Being there for the last two and a half hours with a regressive mental absence of my sense of being, I recalled that it was supposed to be an 'enjoyable' reunion of our alma mater. Sadly, it was akin to waiting for a ravaging matador to rage towards a complaisant bull. I was waiting for a few known ones from our alumni group until that very moment. Till then, I tried to keep guessing the nature of magic potions being taken, by measuring the dynamics of different people when they were invited to the dais for the one 'big' talk- precisely from the manner of walking or rather snaking through the crowd when there was ample space beside, the way of greeting us with a legendary "hello" or the time lag between the syllables 'H', 'E', 'L' and 'O' and the basis of combining India's economic growth with the amount of booze available in this very party, as some of the necessary indicators of measurement among others. Still I would bet that only a handful had actually seen been to a dais before.

Returning to the focal plane, for the first few seconds, I kept wondering about the origin of this Aphrodite-like splendour. Chances were like (1) Girlfriend=80%- these  studs from our college make the most of it whenever they get even the slightest of  an opportunity after passing out, for they usually convert it having faced the negative side of the LAA(line of acceptable attraction) range for four excruciating years, (2) Daughter-5%, taking into account the family  type father figures who were not 'on a  so high' and the rest (3) 10% - an alien from Venus or a humanoid terminator who first attracts you and then terminates you because its whole mission is to terminate humans and things prevalent to these schools of thought.

                                                                             I 'star'-gazed my already moonstruck eyes towards this resplendent personification of beauty itself. Her hands were carved with a poetic finesse, which seemed to wave with a measured magnitude of impatience upon the ongoing conversation. Her eyes reflected a soothing sense of peace and humility, ears were accessorized with simple jewellery reflecting a strange sense of austerity yet serving its purpose, lip movements suggested an aversion to loquacity and the sculpted milky-white face revealed that she was not a direct alumna. She was wearing a glowing green salwar-kameez, with white dazzling sandals caressing her smooth pearly feet.

                                             
The other people in the coterie were an elderly man with a definite ardour for wisdom and another man with jet black hair, which was perhaps achieved by using loads of hair-gel, a dark complexioned face, frame-less spectacles and he probably had umpteen stories to tell, for his mouth seemed to be action-synchronous like sun-synchronous satellites with the valve for drinking water being frequented by guests. I realized that it had been twenty minutes of appreciating the beauty next door. Not to forget the swaying shiny black hair with a longitudinal free fall to her waist. A gusty wind was present to keep things in motion and for the hair at least. Maybe the breeze was inherently enjoying the sway. I was met with three mean stares from people at slightly different angles when I swerved my line of vision compelling me to look in another direction and probably at my watch. Within moments, the elderly man was standing in front of me. Perhaps it would be another hit and run case, but this time sans the BMW and Salman. The hair-gel black jack was also excitedly hurrying towards me like he was going to have a gala time watching my plight.  I mentally tried to frame up a defense in case I was first charged with ogling and was then hit.  Actually, I had spent an inordinate amount of time appreciating a ‘strange foreign beauty’ which was quite improper by Indian traditions.

Then came the words, "Hi, Sonik", with a curiously familiar accent. I could almost recall the semiconductor lectures during my sophomore year at NIT. He was Prof. Goutam Patnaik. On one side, I was elated that I was not being hit and on the other I anxiously anticipated that he would have just spotted me but not earlier than the moment of realization. The other man was one of my batchmates and branch-topper whom we lovingly called the 'The Dark Knight' for obvious reasons. I stood up and exchanged hand-shakes and pleasantries with the two. And yes, the prof took me to the lady in green to introduce her as his daughter to my utter elation and the three mean starers' envy. She belonged to that prefigured five percent to my absolute delight.  I happened to be Prof. Patnaik's favourite student as I could figure out from my introduction, with a feeble complaint that I was never quite industrious.  Had he given complementing marks, I would have lovingly missed a few bad grades. Back to her, the name was Sonal and she was doing some course in bio-technology which I failed to grasp as I was too busy getting a close up confirmation of my previous readings. With a surprisingly compact voice, I introduced everyone to my present job explaining about my technology and clearing the occasional doubts of the festering dark knight. Soon to my sheer relief Prof. Patnaik went to meet the other professors and I knew that I had to somehow engage this dark knight in someplace else. Probably, had to inform the ‘Joker’.  Then one of the three jokers known friends barged in with a stupefied bearing on his face which was similar to greeting an E.T crawling out of a crashed U.F.O. Even, I initially presumed that he had really seen some exotic alien creature. I pleadingly signaled him to engage the 'dark knight'. He was steering the conversation towards grade points which I had lovingly forgotten and had forgiven myself for. Somehow the joker succeeded in showing me the finger and taking the 'dark knight' away at the same time, on the pretext of finding certain soft-drinks.

My dream run had just begun. It was akin to Tendulkar batting in his purple-patch. Discussions started from technology and headed towards personal hobbies and common interests and even criticizing the boring conceited purview of the ‘dark knight’ to my joy. Even a shred of my vanity was chastened by her steadfast humility. We went to the ice-cream stand and both of us skipped dinner perhaps driven by the sole motivation of spending a few moments together. The discussion was pretty, making her look even prettier was her equally infectious smile. Then an exchange of contact details happened. All too soon, she was to get back home and was close to leave a parting kiss on my cheeks when suddenly the background was disturbed by a loud banging noise. With an abrupt dissolve of the immediate surroundings as in Harry Potter novels, I found myself lying on a bed  with someone shouting at the door. Probably, the last kiss was the ‘portkey’ to the real world. Whatsoever, in this other world, it was 0400 hrs and my roommate had just returned from his hometown. A brief span of forty five seconds of winking eyelids had created a wonder which I would be glad to barter with this reality.