The photograph | Short story | Love
The photograph | Short story | Love
-Revealing the Un-revealed
The Beginning
On the table were lying memories. Different pictures captured at different times, different age and with different people, each telling a story of its own. Ananya gazed at them all as if she was living them in her eyes there and then yet again. But it was difficult; it was her past, unheard by many around her, in her presence. Some she had forgotten about, and some she desperately wanted to forget. This was not the first time she was going through these pictures. She wanted to know why many of her precious moments ended and still, she was happy with her life. She searched for her curiosity amongst those memories.
There was a photograph of her with Anant; her boyfriend during schooldays whom she had met for the first time in Dehradun. A tall, dark and handsome guy with whom she fell in love the very first time they met and dream of a life together. They were just 17. Love seldom showcases understanding, sometimes it just creates an aura of happiness. The same aura, Ananya was living in, then. The surrounding was blurred to them. She had her first kiss with him. Time went by and maturity knocked the doors, teenage was about to end. Who did what? Was that right? Who was wrong? What mattered and whatnot, everything needed a justification. Things began to change slowly and were never the same.
Memories
She picked up another photograph; Anuja, her best friend at college, who always stood by her in her highs and lows. Enjoyed with her in the hay-days and cried in her sorrow. She was her sole support in the 3 years of college at Delhi. Anuja and Ananya spent most of their time gossiping together. But as she began to realize what her life was meant for and what she should do to make it worthwhile, her priorities changed and so did the people around her. With her changed approach, she had to juggle her life between her best friend and her future, ultimately the relation did not work out.
With her eyes wet, she kept the photograph down and searched for something which could make her smile.
She picked up the photo of her teddy bear, which made her wonder who gifted it to her. It was Ansh, her online friend. She met him on a social networking site, who made his way into her life, first through Whats App and then through Skype. At that time, she was working in Kolkata, which also happened to be her hometown. At this stage, she did not want a relationship but was eager to keep herself engaged in some activity apart from work.
Marriage was not on her cards at least for the next 2 years and so came Ansh. She met Ansh, and gradually their proximity grew. She dated him for a year. When she was with him, she felt liberated. She lost herself within him. She lived this phase of life. It made her more mature and independent. In an effort to feel free, she missed the part of understanding the person in her life. Her constraints of not entering in a relationship and still to be with Ansh confused her and that confused her relationship with hi. She never convinced herself and so knowingly or unknowingly things ended yet again.
Finally, she kept the pictures aside.
She realized how something that was once a part of her, does not exist today. Whether it was her first kiss in school with Anant, her sloshed state with Anuja, or losing her virginity with Ansh; each moment was an integral part of her life, which added some spice, excitement and thrill to her life and made her feel ecstatic. But none lasted. Going through the scattered set of pictures she realized how it was not the end in a true sense.
They always changed their direction and got lost somewhere, with a hope of returning in future. She slowly began to feel good that how she should not be sad as nothing had actually ended in the real sense. The end comes with the closure of certain things or certain people in your life. But that is what the dilemma of life is; the only thing that ends in life is life, rest everything continues, either in present or in memories of the past or in the hope of a better and brighter future.
Finally..
She was neither regretting them nor was she satisfied with letting them wave off in the ocean and reaching different shores. Instead, she understood how the memories that the pictures brought back were to make her understand the importance of time and how in each phase of life, each experience mattered and did well to her without affecting her present.
She searched through them once again, and a picture brought a smile to her face finally. Bringing it close to her and kissed it. She found an empty photo frame. She made her way towards it and put a picture in it. It was of her and her husband with whom she had an arranged marriage. She just had spent over a year with him but still, he was very important to her. What was the thing which made her choose him over others, she never understood?
She didn’t understand whether she loved him more than Anant or Ansh. Whether she was guilty of not telling him about her past, she never thought of it. She was finally happy with the answers she got. She understood there will be no end to any of the relations she lived; the only end will be that they will be one of these clicked pictures and she wanted to be clicked with a smiling face.
The door knocked, and she realized it was her husband, keeping all the pictures back in the old bag; where she thought the pictures actually belong and leaving them in the storeroom, she went to open the door.
@ramta jogi
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Childhood | English Poetry
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