Who is she,part 16

For a moment, my own home looked like a stranger’s house to me. I was rooted to the threshold of the entrance and my feet refused to move. What seemed like an eternity to me must have been just a few seconds before a sweet voice said even more sweetly, “Hello, Bittu, why don’t you come in?” fell into my ears. It was as if Anita was asking me to walk into her home.

“Hello…” I almost stuttered in reply. Suddenly it struck me that she had called me by my pet name. We were meeting for the first time and I was already Bittu to her. This certainly sent a thrill down my body. Finally, I managed to go in. My mother was sitting on the sofa right in front of the door. She gave me a very curious look, a look I could not fathom. I wondered what Anita had told her. She must have definitely complained about me, I was sure of that. What would my mother say to me?

“Why are you still standing, why don’t you sit down?” It was Anita, acting like this was her house and I was a guest. What was happening or what had happened to make her behave in this manner? She looked completely at home while I behaved like a stranger from the outside world.” Where were you all this time, Bittu? You haven’t even had breakfast!” This time it was my mother and she sounded perfectly normal.

“Mummy ,  I will make some tea for him first” Saying this, Anita left the room. She had addressed my mother as mummy! Had she really done so or were my ears playing tricks upon me? Calling my mother mummy, going to the kitchen to make tea, what was all this?

“You shouldn’t have written that letter, Bittu, had she shown that letter to her parents, her father would have come here and had a fight. Everyone knows about Mr. Suri’s fiery temper. It was nice of her to have come to me” As mummy was speaking Anita entered with some tea and snacks.

“I will just come back in a few minutes” Mummy said and left the room.

Anita placed the tea in front of me, gave me a dazzling smile, looked around her and then gave me a gentle kiss on the lips. I almost had a heart attack. What was she doing? This was totally unexpected but then there so many other things also which were unexpected. She sat down in front of me, the smile did not leave her face and she continued looking at me. I could see warmth and affection in her eyes.
“Bittu, do you know you are a coward?”

“No. Not at all. I am not a coward.  What makes you say so?” At last, I had found my voice.

“You took such a long time to tell a girl that you loved her, I thought boys were braver than that?

“It might have taken me a long time but finally I did manage to, didn’t I?”

“Oh yes, you did and that too by sending me a note through one of your friends, couldn’t you have had the courage to talk to me directly? That means you were afraid which shows you are a coward” she seemed to be mocking me, almost laughing at me and enjoying every minute of it.

“O.K. I am a coward , I don’t want to argue about that. I want to know how you managed to come here.”

“ Bittu, after I read your note, I was very happy but I was also worried .I hardly knew you except as a handsome young man with whom I had fallen in love but who never had time to even look at me. I thought you were arrogant and conceited. Was what you had written in that note really true? I asked myself a thousand times. Could I trust you? I knew boys should not be trusted easily. I could have sent my reply through Jayesh but I needed time to think, I did not want to do anything in a hurry. Therefore I told him that I would reply on your Srinagar address. The next day you left for Kashmir and I was on the terrace, watching you go and silently wishing you good bye. That is another matter that you did not have time to even look back.”

She carried on speaking and I kept on listening. The day after I left she decided to meet my mother. Very bold of her, I must say. She came to my place and brought my note along with her. She met my mother and had told her about what her son had written to her. She even showed my letter to her. I was sure it must have come as a shock to mummy. Initially she thought, Anita had come to complain about me and almost lost her temper but her fears were soon allayed when Anita told her she had come to ask her whether her son could be trusted. She admitted she also loved me but was not sure if I was sincere .My mother, being a mother, assured her that Bittu was a very honest, truthful and sincere boy and he couldn’t even hurt a fly. I was sure my mother must have praised me to the skies. Which mother wouldn’t? It was after her conversation with my mother that Anita decided she could trust me and wrote her answer to me. Since that day, she had been coming to my place every day. One day she asked my mother or rather told her that she would address her as mummy, if she didn’t mind. This had made my mother happy, she must have thought she had found a daughter- in- law and that too such a pretty one. After that, my mother became mummy, my brother became bhayya  and my father became papa. So this was the way she had made a place for herself in the hearts of every member of my home.

As I was listening to her, I was thinking at the same time. How many girls would have acted the way she did? How many girls would have been as bold and courageous as she had been? I had never heard of any girl acting in the manner she had. Some doubts also started creeping in. Was this cunningness on her part? She had inveigled herself into the hearts of my parents in a very tactful manner. Was this her innocence or was it her shrewdness. Looking at her innocent face, I could not even dream of her being cunning or shrewd. After all what did she have to gain by resorting to subterfuge? We were not rich; ours was an average middle class family so she couldn’t have had any ulterior motives. I was convinced she was a gem of a girl and I had found my partner for life.

“Bittu, I have to go now. By the way, would you mind if I call you by some other name? Everyone calls you Lalit or Bittu, I want to have my own special name for you. Will Baitu be alright?”

“So what, mothers love their children and I love you, my darling Baitu “ she got up, I also got up at the same time and the next thing I knew was that we were in each other’s arms, and our lips were locked together in a passionate kiss. I was scared my mother would enter the room any moment but Anita seemed to have no such fears, she was behaving as if we were the only ones in the house! Was this boldness, foolishness, what was this? I had no answer. All I knew was that I was madly in love. She suddenly disengaged herself.

“Mummy, I am leaving.” She shouted and left.

So this was the beginning of my relationship with Anita. I forgot everything that Prakash and Jayesh had told me about her. I was sure they had been lying although I had no idea why. Maybe I was so blinded by love that I could see nothing but good in Anita. Swarn’s words about her impending marriage also turned out to be wrong. Anita completed her graduation and decided to go in for post graduation .It was at the same time that her father got his posting orders. He had completed more than three years in Amritsar and as per the rules he had been due for a transfer. This came as a shock to me. It meant I would not be able to meet Anita as often and as regularly as we used to. We had started seeing each other every day and life without her was hard to imagine But part, we had to, we had to accept this reality. The parting was painful but bearable as we were sure in our hearts that we would be meeting soon. My parents had also made up their minds that as soon as I got a job, they would talk about our marriage with Anita’s parents. There seemed to be no problems with that. So on that positive note, Anita left for Chandigarh.

Luckily it was the month of June; the beginning of another session and it was no problem for Anita to get admission in Punjab University. She had decided to take her Master’s degree in English. In the meanwhile, I had completed my Master’s degree in management and was confident of getting a lucrative job very soon. Things looked bright and rosy made rosier by the fact that I would receive a letter from her every day. Each letter ran into several pages and I would really enjoy reading them. So the days passed and after a couple of months I got a job offer from a very big private company. I had been given Delhi as my first posting. I wanted to meet Anita before taking a final decision so I told my parents about my plans of visiting Chandigarh for a couple of days. I was packing my things and would be leaving for Chandigarh in a couple of days, I was humming an old Rafi hit-deewana muj sa nahin- when a voice thundered,”WHERE IS LALIT?” There was no one else in the drawing room except my mother. I could hear her feeble voice, muttering something inaudible, I could also sense panic in her voice. Who was this man? Who could it be? I decided to see for myself.