A Dreadful Determination! Part-15

Urmila and Sharmila are sisters. The elder one Sharmila was in love with Vinod, her neighbour, even when they passed through the school-age. Father had brought proposals which she resisted tooth and nail, though she knew not the result. Two-three ones she escaped on the pretext of studies. She recalled her baby-hood memories.  All their friends, but Vinod flew away from the brood for life’s needs. Vinod was in the look out of a job. Urmila’s father, Venugopal with conventional beliefs didn’t agree for their marriage. Finally father held a proposal close to his heart for Urmi. He finalized it despite all the resistance from Urmila. He thought time would bless her with glee. The wedding took place. Urmila got separated from the groom on a lie the next day itself. She had told him that she was a habitual consumer of Phenobarbital medicine. Obtaining no response from Vinod she phoned up to him. Vinod obtained a decent job and he became ready to wed Urmila.This time vinod’s parents resisted since Urmila was a divorcee.]

Now pl.read

Vinod waited and waited for the wound in parents’ minds to heal. It didn’t, the time widened it instead. The tree of Time was shedding its leaves into days, months and years. Nothing turned in favour of them. Vinod at one point stepped down to the level of register marriage. Urmila straight away annulled that approach because she knew that Vinod was always against such a process and more over it might affect her dignity as a faculty member in the college.

 Finding no way out the twosome started losing hope. It that brings grandeur in man’s life is hope. It holds a person up, while drowning in distress. Hope guides one to devote more time in duty and so one attains the required result.Urmila made up her mind to accept the downbeat verdict for their litigation of love filed in the court of destiny. 

Now she learned many a thing from the environs and experiences of four-five years. Time filled in her ample maturity to think in sensible lines. More over the spiritual lectures and discourses she used to attend in the temple nearby had changed her a lot. She learned to override passion with reason. She inferred that God had not chosen Vinod as her groom. And hence arose all those hitches and hindrances.

 “Man proposes, God disposes’, but a lot many times he approves also his proposals. I’ll go with whatever he has kept in store for me. Probably my desire may not be worth-approving,” she was turning a little philosophical,“Let happen what the God has decided for us, both of us together shouldn’t suffer. You find out another girl and marry her. No use in waiting and wasting our time like this. Let’s reduce the number of our calls. May He unite us in our rebirth.”

Though miserable was the decision, she managed to calm down and console her ‘self'.

The sentences she spoke fell as a loud summer-thunder in Vinod’s aural organs. He couldn’t believe them.

“Is it Urmila who spoke like this?” he wondered. He couldn’t digest the matter.

 Nevertheless having less or nil response from Urmila, slowly he too adopted less regularity in dialing her number.At the same time the esteem he had held for her had no losswith regard to depth. He did not rather could not close the shutters of his mind solely against her. The width of the distance from mind to mind was stretching, though the heart at times, was reluctant to be far.

Urmila’s parents tried all the ways and played all the tricks on her to find a fiancé for her. They told her to find out a person of her option. Nothing ended in success. She remained cool on all the proposals. She was contented with her singleness in life. She felt as if she was a free bird perching in her own nest; she didn’t become an introvert though. She didn’t want a second person to impede her personal affairs.

Again flowers faded from herb, decade. Vinod lurked in vain. Neither his parents nor did Urmila deviate from their stance. And his parents were vigourously looking for a fiancée for their son. Vinod became more reticent and rigid. He got fully confined in his job. His visits and calls to his parents declined in number. He conversed with his parents only matter of fact.

 Their gloom began to multiply in high degrees. Hence they stepped down or had to step down to the level of accepting his affair keeping aside their unwillingness, Who would initiate it again?’ remained as an unanswered question. Their ego lurked for their son to bring forth the subject once more. In fact not ego but their fear of facing Vinod’s reaction, they locked their lips. Consenting to propose Urmila for him after all the exercises may infuriate him. Once he had given a stiff response in negation for all the proposals. He voiced very loud, “I prefer a bachelor’s life. Please do not disturb me, aren’t there unmarried people in this world?

 Eventually Vinod took a decision not to repeat the family-cycle, “I may become a father and this kind of history may repeat. I can’t predict my attitude in my fatherhood. No such impediments I have to face, if I am alone. There are so many single people with satiated lives.”  

All the philosophies slaved his mind because obtaining Urmila he felt, was Herculean. But if she came to his life, no doubt he would receive her with serene warmth and gracious tenderness.

                                                                                                                        [To be contd.]