Friday, August 08, 2008

strange, stranger, strangest?

Her name was Fatima. She was beautiful as beautiful can be. Tall, fair, svelte, eyes the colour of forests… She was someone any guy in college would have fallen for. But she already had a boyfriend, Imran. We had never seen him but she spoke a lot about him. She would come to college with red roses in her hands gifted by him. We knew more about him than her, we thought. Some days she would enter class all red eyed, having had a fight with him and would cry bitterly all day. But they would make up the next day. Her parents knew him and his parents loved her. It was the perfect love story.

Then on the last day of college, she called us together, wanting to say something. She was getting married she said and going away to the US. We obviously assumed it was Imran and congratulated her. But she continued. This was not the important part. What she really wanted to say was that there was no such person called Imran in her life. Imran was just a figment of her imagination. In her words: I knew I would never find the guy of my dreams so I just made him up.

It was the weirdest experience one could have gone through.

This was long ago, but the reason I thought of it now was because of what happened a few days back.

There was this girl I knew from work, named Kajal. Ordinary girl, living in Parel with her husband. She spoke about him and her parents. I don’t really recollect any spectacular conversation we had ever. She wore a burkha sometimes because her husband was a Muslim. Then one day she said she was going to move out of the country soon with her husband as he had found a good job there. She quit her job and that was the last we heard of her. Till a few days back.

A common friend saw a small article in a newspaper about a girl found murdered in her flat. It was Kajal. Few of us went to her house to offer our condolences. Which is when things started going haywire. It was the same girl, same name, same face, yes she had worked in our office before. But nothing else, absolutely nothing was the same. She wasn’t married. She had never moved out of the country. The police had no idea who had murdered her. And I thought she was ordinary! Now I think I’ve never met anyone more mysterious than her.

But then, aren’t most people mysterious? I ardently believe that one can never know a person fully. Like I’ve said before: Every person, be it my parents or my best friends, know only a part of me...a part which I choose to show to them… I wonder when I die, if people will gather together and exchange these bits of information that they know and try and figure out the whole. And I wonder if I could stand by and actually watch the fun or rather, confuse them even further :)


(Some names and events have been changed to protect identity)

5 Comments:

Blogger naveeta said...

When i went to Partha's house the last time i realized even i do not know him.

22 October, 2008  
Blogger Ashu said...

I agree that people only know a part of you but it may not be the part that you consciously want to show. Humans are too complex to understand.

28 April, 2009  
Blogger Ashu said...

I agree to the part that even the people closest to you only see a part of you. However, what part to show is not always consciously your decision.
Human nature is complex.

28 April, 2009  
Blogger Ashu said...

I agree to the part that even the people closest to you only see a part of you. However, what part to show is not always consciously your decision.
Human nature is complex.

28 April, 2009  
Blogger another wanderer said...

@naveeta: nobody knows anyone

@Nihi: Agree

22 March, 2015  

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