A Friend Who Became My Spouse

Having accepted the offer to work for a mining company, I had been over the moon. At such a young age, I would be getting an opportunity to work with one of the best companies of India. Besides this was one of the high paying companies that had come to the campus that year. I knew Gouri would be thrilled.

“Hi! I have got the job with the mining company that I had written to you about!” Striking a conversation was not my forte. I blurted out the good news without any preamble.

“Hey! That’s wonderful news! Congrats! When did you get the information? How many have been selected from your batch? When will you be joining?”

Like most girls of her age, Gouri was talkative, always wanting to know things to the minutest of details. I enjoyed listening to Gouri’s chatter. We had struck an instant rapport after we got introduced because I never had to make an effort to start a conversation with Gouri. She ensured that she did the bulk of the talking and spared me the pain of trying to keep the conversation going.

We were introduced to each other when I had snatched the phone from Soma, our common friend, and begun a conversation with Gouri. She was in class eight and I had just passed my school final examination. Somewhere, somehow, something had clicked and we became the best of friends. After that there was no looking back. When Gouri passed her school final and decided to move to Kolkata, our bond of friendship, instead of waning, grew stronger. We wrote to each other frequently, sharing our joys and sorrows and the general happenings in each other’s life. Somehow we had found a common thread that kept us bound together in a bond of friendship despite the physical distance.

“Hi..are you listening? You haven’t answered any of my questions. What’s your place of posting like?”

“I don’t have much information about the place. It’s a small mining town located on the border of Bihar and Orissa. There is only one train from Jamshedpur that goes there. The General Manager of the company who had come to take our interviews described it as a hill-station nestled between mountain ranges. The colony is literally in the midst of a clearing in the forest and therefore a frequent haunt of wild elephants. He also mentioned about watching deers come to the nearby river while sipping chilled beer on Sunday mornings at the officer’s club.”

“Wow, must be such a beautiful place,” Gouri squealed.

“You must send me tickets with your first salary so that I can visit you.” Gouri joked. “I want to see how you set yourself up all alone. All your life you have had the luxury of staying at home with your parents taking good care of you. Now you will realize the plight of hostellers like me.”

Having decided to get in touch once again after I reached my place of posting, we hung up.

Standing on the platform of the destination station, I now felt like crying out in despair. Except for the yellow slab of concrete announcing the name, the station was bare! This place, which had been described as a hill station by the General Manager, seemed nothing more than a remote village. How would I be able to spend my life-time in such a place? As I stepped out, there were more unpleasant surprises in store. Where were the movie theaters and the shopping malls? Where were the restaurants where I had dreamt of having an occasional evening out with friends? I would have the money but there seemed to be no way of spending that money in this mining village. The market place had a few thatched huts that sold the bare necessities. A few tea stalls selling sweet-meats and snacks were all that was there in the name of eateries. Fate, I realized, had dealt me a cruel blow!

In the midst of all this depression and trying to settle down, I had forgotten my promise of contacting Gouri and giving her details of the place. The place had no telephone lines and one had to travel sixty kilometers to the nearest town of Chaibasa, if one wanted to make a phone call.

It was almost a month before I found time to head to Chaibasa in the hope of catching up with Gouri. “Speaking to her would lift my spirits a bit”, I thought.

“Hello, young man! Finally you have had the time! I hope they are not making you slog so hard so as to make you forget your friends and loved ones?”

“I am sorry for this long silence. But the fault is not entirely mine. You have to see to believe how under-developed this place is. Can you believe that I have travelled sixty kilometers today in order to call you? This place is in the midst of nowhere. I have a feeling that very soon I will lose all contact with the civilized world outside and become like one of those natives living in some god-forsaken island.” The disappointment was evident in my voice.

“You have travelled sixty kilometers just to talk to me? How romantic! I didn’t know you cared so much for me. Tell me more about this place please! Oh, how beautiful it must be to be able to live in this way, in the lap of nature, cut off from the outside world! When can I go to visit you?”

The excitement in her voice took me by surprise. Here I was lamenting, trying to fight off my depression for the whole of last month and this lady sounded so positive? “She must be trying to console me”, I thought and once again burst into a tirade highlighting the ills of the place.

“There are no decent shops! Even the newspaper that you get is a day old!! Entertainment here means going to the officer’s club where you can drown your sorrow in pegs of alcohol every evening!!! Tell me, given an option, would you like to live in such a place? How can one stay in a place where one is scared to walk on the roads for fear of being trampled by a wild elephant? You are welcome to visit me here. I shall send the train ticket by post and you can come, if the post does reach you, that is. There are numerous examples of the postman throwing away all letters when he has had a larger dose of alcohol! Even if the postman decides to deliver your tickets and you do come to see me, pray what are you going to do here? You will spend a week, sympathise with me, try to show me the brighter side of life and then go back home, leaving me destined to rot in this god-forsaken place!”

I realized that he was literally shouting into the mouthpiece and that there was silence at the other end of the line. I wondered whether Gouri had disconnected out of sheer irritation.

“Hey..are you listening?”

“Yes, I am. And I want you to know that I am prepared to spend a lifetime with you in that paradise. Will you agree if I propose to share your life with you? Maybe, together, we can really make a paradise of that place?”

I stood rooted at the spot not sure whether I had heard correctly. If fate had been cruel to me during the last one month, lady luck ensured that there was a soothing balm well within my reach, in the form of a wonderful friend!