PROPOSAL

Something does not seem right!! All the kids are behaving completely different today. Shyamal always liked to follow some order, and the way his friends are behaving is completely intolerable for him. Why would Murgi step on the broken tile of the classroom, being his best friend?! He explicitly told him not to step on any broken tiles with odd numbered cracklines and always to step on the even numbered tiles otherwise he feels a weird pinch in his gut. Murgi, who is well known for his messi hair and a sharp beak like nose, always followed Shyamal's orders. In fact that is the reason Murgi is his best friend, if one ignores the fact that Shyamal is the one and perhaps the only listener of Murgi's out-of-this-world poetry. 

   Not only Murgi; Raju, Kamal, Koel and even Nilanjana, the topper of their class are all writing their names on the board, which was strictly forbidden by Kanika Ma'am. And most weirdly they dare to call him to do the same. Chinti is still atleast sitting with him as she always does. Shyamal trusts Chinti, that she would not do anything stupid like whatever the others are doing. But wait a minute!! How did he missed the dresses?? Each one of his friends are wearing full pants, shirts, kurtas and even some of them are in coats!! Is he the only one missing some notice for a fancy dress party or some drama club audition? All the girls are looking weird, they are mostly in saree or in something else, but not in the school uniform. Shyamal felt like looking at everything through a glass of sleepy haze, exactly like when Asit sir starts his class lecturing about the stupid monkey climbing a pole without any grip whatsoever. Similar to Asit sir's math class, the whole classroom somehow seems a bit hazy to him, it's like he is in some distant dream. He can see everyone talking and giggling, and doing forbidden stuff like writing their names in the board, but he cannot exactly focus on their topics of discussion. He thought of asking Chinti what is happening??!! why is everyone behaving so differently?? But right about then he saw Tumpa, and his heart skipped a beat. The moment she entered the classroom, all of Shyamal's focus got sharpened and he can only see her. Even without the school uniform she looks fantastic with a saree, perhaps she is playing the role of a queen in the drama everyone else seems to be preparing for. Shyamal always liked Tumpa. She is like the centre of attraction for all the boys in their class. Funny thing is, Kamal already secretly told her "I love you", but she said "no". That is why Kamal has stopped watching movies and preaches everyone that movies are not real things, secretly telling "I love you" does not mean that the heroine would say yes. Shyamal smiled inside, how stupid does he think Shyamal is?!! everyone knows that movies are inspired by true stories, its just Superman didn't got visa, otherwise he would have been here in India flying around.

   Take for example Chinti. She is quite a reasonable girl after Murgi. Even Chinti confirmed him that if he can secretly propose Tumpa with "I love you", she would definitely say yes, because Shyamal is the hero of the story. Suddenly a thought strike's him, it seems everyone else is too busy with whatever fancy dress party they think they are in and they might ignore his actions if he can be silent enough. This is a good opportunity to softly tell Tumpa, "I love you". Saying something very softly near the ear should still be counted as being a secret. He has to stand up from the bench ever so slightly. He pushed chinti a bit with his arms signalling that he wants to get out of the desk. Chinti understood as always and give him the space and went to the front, perhaps clearing the road for Shyamal to move into action. He stand up and looked for his favourite pencil to give to Tumpa, since "I love you" without a gift is as meaningless as a bottle without water. He searched his pocket and found a weird thing, handkerchief. He does not know how that thing is in his pocket!! it smells amazing, a smell that seems too familiar but he cannot remember where it came from. Nonetheless he have to act now or the moment would pass. What if someone else use this opportunity and propose Tumpa!! she have to yes to that then. Shyamal started going towards Tumpa to propose her all the while standing on his toes for extra silence. But something is not right!! he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his knees and felt down and bumped his head. Surprisingly, he didn't felt any pain but noticed the sleepy haze to be getting mild a bit.  Tumpa noticed him and come running towards him, stupidly stepping on the broken tile, even in that situation Shyamal felt a pinch in his heart when Tumpa did that. But suddenly he can clearly see Chinti through the haze coming towards him. Even with her full focus towards him, she didn't stepped on the broken tile and grabbed him hard to make him stand up. She must be saying something, but Shyamal cannot hear anything now, everything else is a blur apart from Chinti's face. He never realised how beautiful she is, even with her asymmetric nose and a single mole on one side of her face, she is more beautiful than a queen whose role Tumpa might be playing. He suddenly realised that the asymmetry of her nose is exactly cancelled by the asymmetrical mole, and the smell!! she exactly smells like the handkerchief. Chinti is now the closest person to him, with her frail body, she wanted to make Shyamal stand up again. Deep down, he knows something is off and he might not be able stand again but he knows what to do. He shakily shoved the Handkerchief to Chintis hands and softly said in her ears, "I love you".  Now all the Handkerchief smell, the crooked nose, the single black mole is his. Everything went black.

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     Chintashree woke up with the sudden jerk of braking the car. From last few months she is always tired and dozing off in the car is quite normal these days. On top of her tiring schedule, the last night she has to fight a lot with Mani alias Dr. Manikuntal Sahani, her childhood friend, over the telephone for most of the night. Handling a patient inside the house with dementia is already a lot for her, and she does not want to travel with the patient. Patient!! Yes, slowly but steadily when her husband became a patient, is something that she does not know anymore. Sometime she doubts if the person she is now living with is her husband anymore!! He stopped recognising her a few months back. Mani is also a very close friend of his husband, in fact they were from the same school and luck brought the musketeers back to the same city during the twilight of their life. Mani was like a blessing to both of them. From the moment her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimers, Mani was there every step of the way. In any case, due to Mani's persuasion, she has taken her husband to their school reunion. 

   Everyone else of their childhood friends seems happy, they are talking about their kids, their amazing jobs, their trips to different places but Chintashree was not able to join in any of their discussions. Someone spiked Mani's hair as he used to have during their school days and after a round of smiles and giggles everyone started being nostalgic and went on to reminiscing their good-old-days. Sometimes past happiness turns into a hurtful void for the present self. She wanted to avoid that feeling of nothingness and tried to move out of the huddle. Perhaps out of sheer muscle memory, Chintashree took her husband to the exact bench they used to sit in. Contrary to the faintest of the faint hope that she had, nothing changed in his behaviour, he was just his usual non-interacting self, like a scientist lost in his own computations. What was she thinking!! that he would suddenly get back his memory, and restart being the annoying, self-destructive person with obsessive compulsions that she weirdly loved very much. That person already died, and what left is just a shell, a patient without identity. Suddenly she felt a push, he is pushing her to move and let him get out of the desk. Enough!! Chintashree thought, she would just go and grab Mani and tell him to take care of his friend, she has done enough!!! She wants to live her life, without the shell of a person who does not even remembers her. She was walking towards Murgi or Mani when she heard the bang and everyone else shouting her husband's name towards her back. Her body started shaking, does something happened to Shyamal?? it was the most difficult about-turn of her life, it took immense self control from her to not faint. Her mind was filled with all possible destructive thoughts about Shyamal. She completed the turn, it was not that bad as she thought or perhaps her senses are already numb. Shyamal failed down and hit his head and there was a faint red line running from the corner of his head towards his cheekbone. Everything around her went silent and she started running towards shyamal and tried to get him off the floor all the while shouting "Shyamal, ei Shyamal, is everything alright!!". She saw a spark of light in Shyamal's eyes, it seems he finally recognised his Chinti. He pushed his handkerchief, on which Chinti embroidered their initials long back, in her hand and put all of his effort to reach his lips to her ears and said "I love you". Everything went black.