The muddy water

The muddy water

He stood on the bridge. The river down flew slowly... it had no hurry to reach to the sea. For a moment he kept on looking at the water. A small pink rose came flowing along... he just gazed once at the flower. Being on a high bridge it was not possible for him to pick it up but then he would have hardly picked it up even if he would have got a chance to... it was the thing he now detested the most. The flower lover’s bouquet of love had now got converted into a bin of hatred... The flowers had probably wilted...

He still remembered the day when she had given him the pink rose on the rose day. It was the first rose he had ever got. She was a nice girl and in looks, she could be classified as pretty. He had never even dreamt that a girl would be giving a rose to him and when a girl like her gave him a pink rose, he was about to get a heart attack... but again he had controlled himself. He had felt it to be a prank and had denied the rose. He was probably the only guy who had actually denied the first ever pink rose of his life.... but then probably it was worth rather than being laughed at later because of a prank... Later she had convinced him that she really had some feelings for him and then he had accepted the rose was a different thing altogether but he still believed his denial for the rose was indeed one of the wisest things he had ever done...

A girl offering a hand of friendship, a rose, asking out for a date.... all this was very much new for him. He had never dealt with things like love or affair or to say in better words, something known as relationship or so; but this feeling had been amazing. Waiting for someone to call, waiting for some special sms, and special pings on the messengers.... it all felt nice to him. Somehow slowly he had started liking this experience. His life was transformed completely. His lifestyle had changed. He had started spending time on makeup to look better. He had started buying gifts. He had started to daydream... all this had happened in just a few months...

He now remembered every day... it was so clear as if some movie was being played in front of him. He still remembered the day when they had gone out for their first date... a romantic dinner in a restaurant on a beach. He had never experienced the magic of the candle light dinner before. The cool sea breeze flew past them making her hair float momentarily, making her look like a princess. But he somehow had not been able to tell her all that that day... It was her who had asked him out and he had felt really awkward while dining with her, while dancing with her and even sharing a single ice cream.... Gradually he had got accustomed to all those things... They had started going to such dates regularly and he had actually started feeling something special for her...

But somehow things hadn’t been so smooth recently as they were in past... probably she had started liking someone else more and that’s what he couldn’t stand... he had called her for a small meeting and had opened up his heart and that’s where everything had gone wrong... a shocking truth had got revealed and it had looked as if he had made a fool of himself...

Apparently she had no feelings for him and whatever she had done with him was just to keep a drunkard guy away from her by showing him a bodyguard around her. All those dates, the roses, the gifts were just to enjoy the free evenings and to keep the unwanted guys away. She had just portrayed everything.... it was all fake... she hadn’t felt anything the way he had. It was just an acting... brilliant acting that had fooled almost the whole college. And now, he was being neglected or to say left alone to his own fate just because she had got a new guy.

He had always preferred study as his best friend. He had preferred staying away from girls and then he had changed; thanks to her... and now she preferred to stay away from him. It was bad...no it was unfortunate for him... the cocoon had evolved into a butterfly; just to realize the flower that he had longed for and got converted from the cocoon, was no more his...

All those memories surfaced as he kept on looking at the slow river water. It looked nice but again the very next moment he felt as if the muddy water of the river was hiding something beneath. The colour of the mud didn’t allow him to see anything below the surface. Who knew what all things the seemingly slow muddy water had hid beneath it? And he hated it... he hated all that, he hated all those who hid something and portrayed something else. He wondered why people could not remain honest. He went off to see what the river had hid beneath it...

Her cell kept ringing as the police redialled the last number to identify the body... but the noise in the disc was too high for her to make out the ringing of her cell... it kept on ringing for a while; probably she was so busy in the new guy that she didn’t have any time to spend even for her old friend’s or convenience-crush’s dead body’s identification....

-Niru