It’s monsoon in Delhi! Mr. Covid 19 has been around for more than hundred days. He has literally changed the lives of the people. For good or bad, remains a question to ponder upon. For some, there’s a peace after chaos of fast life. For the introverts, it’s a blessing in disguise. For some, it’s happiness for getting to see their kids growing up. For some, it’s hard, it’s lonely, it’s tough.
It’s a regular day today and Zafirah after her morning yoga and mindfulness practice, is ready to kick start her day. Wearing smile and standing in front of a mirror, she thinks that behind her smile nobody can see the volcanic eruption of pain that she went through in past few days. True, she’s a strong and resilient girl who knows her ways to get back to her feet. Sometimes, she takes time to do so but when she’s back, she never looks back.
She is still smiling and looking into the mirror, when her mother calls her, “Zafirah! Your coffee is ready”. Her morning starts with a perfect cup of coffee by her mother, with less sugar or almost no sugar and extra milk. She sits with a warm cup of coffee in her favourite cup that has a world map printed on it. A traveller by heart, she is. If she is not doing anything or in the mid of doing something, she is always searching for new places to visit and filling up her bucket of to-do lists. She opens her laptop to start her work. A perfect corner in her room that she has made her new workstation. She has always liked her workstation to be full of colourful things, pictures, postcards, magnets, motivational quotes, Tibetan prayer flag, and occasionally something related to work that she needs to remember. She has set up a workstation at home with the same feels, postcards, books, pictures, notes, and sticky notes on laptop to be reminded of important tasks to be done. She starts writing down the tasks to be completed in her notepad when her eyes look outside the window and gaze at beautiful monsoon sky that started to pour down on the dry land and spread a beautiful petrichor (mitti ki Khushboo). She loves these little things! These things make her happy and make her forget about everything in life. She is smiling again, a big wide smile. She then plays “who kagaz ki kashti” on her laptop, sits back with her cup of coffee and just look at the dance of rain drops. She lives for such moments. She enjoys her own company.
She is lost in her own la la land when her phone rings. It’s her friend Rabia. A daily call ritual with her has kept her sane in this lockdown. “Hey, Good morning sweetheart”, she says. “Good Morning, dear. How are you? Did you sleep well last night?”, Rabia asks her. Everyday, she bombards her with questions of her well-being. She smiles, and says, “yes, I’m doing good today. A lot better than yesterday.”. And they start talking with enthusiasm of being alive and living life. They talk about lot of things, but Rabia mostly talks about spirituality and Zafirah, of course, about travelling. Today, in this good weather, they talk about love and relationships. They both have different take on the topic but at the end, they discuss and come to a common point where both agree.
After a long discussion, she disconnects the call, and go back to her la la land gain. She ponders on the thought of what is love to her and how she wants it. Question, she has refrained to talk about but deep in her heart she’s a girl full of love. But her definition of love doesn’t fit into the modern world. She is a bit more old school. Her mind then sits on one of the clouds and takes her back to the old days where talking to a loved one was not as easier as today. The fixing of time and looking at the clock, sitting near to the MTNL (landline) to attend the call, used to make heartbeat skip. When ease of sending instant message was not there and writing letters was a privileged intimacy. But the love confessed in those letters used to be from heart. It didn’t involve only reading but the imagination too. Imagining the movements of the hand of the loved one while writing that letter. When dates didn’t mean fancy restaurants but eating (rather sharing) an orange ice-cream that probably would have cost only five bucks. When kissing was a far-off dream and the most romantic feeling was just holding hands and listening to favourite songs on Walkman. When sleeping outside in balcony with a table fan was a luxury. When skies used to be blue without any pollution. When nights used to sparkle with gazillions of stars and she used to count them, make shapes of them, give them names and talk to them. Skies has always fascinated her. The vastness of the universe has always made her curious. When she used to sleep on the terrace, under the stars, tune in to radio show “purani jeans by Rj Sayma” and listen to old songs. In the darkness of those nights and brightness of stars, it is in those times, that she fell in love with Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Mukesh and old songs, which continues till now. She believes in soul connection and is not ready to settle down for anything that is not magical and do not stir all these old school love butterflies in her stomach. She is still lost in her own world when she receives routine call from her office at 9:00 AM. And she finally starts her work with a big smile. 😊
I had no reasons to join this language course except for the fact that I was free and so was this course. Hell yeah! Sounds weird? Of course in today’s time a free language course sounds fishy. Why would they do that? Don’t they have enough students to learn their language? Or maybe nobody wants to learn Hungarian. Questions like this were banging in my head when a friend of mine helped me in getting enrolled for the course. My stars can’t thank him enough for this gesture of him. I hope he reads this. 🙂 Okay, so my first class which happened after around five days of the commencement of the course. Sigh! I hope you understand the pain of missing a language class, that too the elementary part, like missing Ka,Kha,Ga of Hindi class. Chuck! I was trying to be funny. Okay, so coming back to my first class, as I entered the class, I was shocked to see around hundred students (of all age group). Like students more than my father’s age. I liked it instantly. Prior to this, and I must admit that to my reluctance, my father and I learned Italian together. He somehow couldn’t give his exam but this made me know him better and his zeal for learning something new along with his struggles of remembering things. Anyway, coming back to the first class again (I have this habit of deviating from main topic) 😛 So, amidst all the students who were attending class from first day, I found myself lost in the pronunciation of the ‘magyar ábécé’ (Hungarian ABC). After that I wasn’t very regular with the classes but I kept trying learning it, missing some part, and then again picking it up from the next lesson. I didn’t made much friends at that time, I didn’t talk to anybody much. I came, attended the class, and went home. I don’t know that even after all this irregularity what kept me glued to this class.
So apart from my irregularities of classes, I was always regular at least with the events organized by Hungarian Cultural Centre. I hope the cultural people don’t read it. hiding face in palms I love exploring places, meeting new people, knowing about their culture. So attending events was like satiating my soul by knowing about their culture through powerpoint presentations, their music, songs and dance. And then of course snacks followed by events was like ‘icing on the cake’. Food makes a Punjabi happy! 😀 I have been to many events organized by various embassies but I found people here at this embassy very grounded and humble. Always smiling, talking to everybody, clicking pictures together and yes how can I forget mentioning Mr.Wilhelm’s (the director) wife preparing finger licking Hungarian delicacies for us. I mean who does that?
When everything got settled at my home, I rejoined the classes. Everything was changed this time. From hundred students to just fifteen were left. Now, I started talking to fellow students. They helped me in coping up with the syllabus. Tanár (teacher) helped me in understanding the lessons that I missed. Events were not happening much but this time I became almost (I was still missing some classes) regular with the classes. I now knew what kept me glued to this course and not leave it in between. It was because of our professor Ms.Margit Köves. Her patience and sweetness encouraged me to keep attending the classes. Wondering how? Well, as I said that I wasn’t regular with the classes so I didn’t know much of the things in the class but then she was always patient and never scolded me for not knowing the things. This motivated me to put more efforts to understand the things. She is from Hungary. No, I absolutely didn’t want to point out that she is not an Indian teacher. winks 😀 You got my point right! Right?
Finally, they met at a restaurant in CP. No holding hands, no hugs, no kisses; just a formal hello. Hiding her tears behind her smile, she asked him about his family and he asked her about her parents. There was an awkward silence. She still thought that Kabir would hold her hand and say “Zafu, let’s run away. Everything will be alright after some time”. This was just her thought. Kabir then broke the silence by saying that “I’m sorry. I feel guilty”. His voice wasn’t trembling. There were no tears rolling down from his eyes. Her mind drifted to his words which he said few weeks back with tears filled in his eyes. She was confused. Her heart was in a dilemma of trusting to what he said earlier or what he was saying now. She had been a good listener always. She kept listening to him. He just had one thing to say that we started on a condition. Condition, that if our parents will agree then only we will get married. She had lot to say but she wasn’t able to bring words out of her mouth. She kept listening. When Kabir was done saying whatever he wanted to say. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth, “But ma never met me, Kabi. My age cannot make me less good or less kind. My age cannot make me a bad person. You could have at least made her meet me. This way I would have thought that you made efforts to keep the relationship. You moved on very easily. I once told you that I was like a bridge on the river that stayed and you were like a passenger who crossed that bridge. My words were true. I loved you, Kabi. And a part of me will always love you.”
Lately, I’ve learned that everything we do is an art. There’s art in sleeping, talking, speaking, walking and in every action that we do. I’ve also come to believe that each of us as a human being is a piece of art in itself, created by the Supreme power. And we all are beautiful in our own way, irrespective of our shape, color and caste.
When Zafirah was small, under the winter sun of every 26th of the January month, her father use to take her to the terrace of the house and show her flying planes, the fighter ones. Since then the flying planes in the open blue sky and sound of it has always fascinated her. She smiles whenever she sees the one in sky!
