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The Myth


Mona sat still. It was mid-afternoon and very hot.She was not able to concentrate on the book open before her.The room looked painfully bright. She wished to lie down a little but she was not habitual of sleeping in the day time ever since she was a small child. She remembered, as a small girl, she would feel sad and lonely seeing her mother taking her afternoon sleep. It was not a short nap and she was strictly instructed to remain quiet.Mona hated this part of the day since then. But as a grown up how she wished she had inculcated this habit in order to disconnect with the continuity of the linear time zone of 12 hours .
She absent-mindedly closed her book and let her thoughts flow. The memories dug so deep suddenly surfaced.Mona no doubt was a keen student, quite envious of her friend's performances but she never strove enough to excel them. She was wayward but clever enough to sail through fairly. She was never well-groomed but had a charisma around her which gained her a number of friends.Neera being one of them.She belonged to an affluent family. She was of short stature but extremely well groomed and pristinely sophisticated.Her dresses seemed to have gone through stringent cleaning and intense ironing. Both of them together presented a contrast. Her expressive and kajoled eyes gleamed with health and charm.Mona would be fascinated by her beautiful hands which looked perfectly manicured though she did a lot of house -hold work. Mona could not recall how they came together because they lived in separate neighbourhoods and were not even class-mates. Mona always felt self conscious and inadeq uate before her. Neera was a visionary and she had imbued her with qualities that Mona perhaps never bore.The friendship turned platonic but from one side only.The ruffian and the uncouth soul that Mona was, she felt guilty in not trying to disillusion her friend but then she knew that her friend shall never be made to see the other side of the human fabric.She let it be.Neera virtually adored her and Mona loved it. Neera was oblivious and unconcerned of Mona's social moorings.This sometimes scared Mona but she was smitten by it all and felt grateful to her for smoothening the roughness in her.She tried to copy her elegance and her impicable manners but it did not last .She was essentially a wild boar who broke free in the wilderness of her environs and revelled in the free flow of time.But she hankered after her friends unconditional love and adoration which took away the shabbiness of her persona.And then they parted.Their lives took such a turn that they could not keep a tab on each other or it was an unconscious relief for Mona to free her friend from such an unequal emotional bondage.But she was always there, embedded in her psyche.It was her eternal hope that Neera would seek her out one day and it was only in the evening o f her life when Mona located her.She had to contact her.It was a nerve wracking moment for her. She should not turn incoherent and shock her friend.But she took the courage and called her friend. Yes it was the same voice yet surprisingly devoid of any shock of revelation.May be she did not connect,Mona thought. She paused. She felt she was losing her voice, she felt weak and waited for the response.'oh Mona' yes yes where were you for so long how much i missed you- oh how very nice'.But the tenor of her voice was flat.She sounded eager to tell something.She told Mona that she had joined some spiritual sect and was very happy and satisfied.Mona felt her bated breath taking the regular rhythm and her dishevelled emotions stabilzing.She silenced her past and entered into the present moment to synchronise her responses with that of her friend's. She said adieu to her old friend in the present garb- but held all the more vehemently and ardently to those two orbs of eyes which used to be brimming with love and deep compassion for that wild and unrestrained Mona who was briddled by those eyes and who still was the same untamed and raw Mona craving for that unviolated love and compassion.

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