Bonds beyond Words
Hidden ties and unfulfilled promises
This is the first draft of a short fantasy fiction story, a part of the ‘Where can you take these stories’ collection. Read the post at the end of the story for more information.
Sammohini was feeling an unexplained urge to re-visit the city museum she once visited as a child with her classmates. She was working from home once again because she often was hit by anxiety attacks when surrounded by too many people. As she was a valuable and resourceful employee of the organization, her company had given her the privilege to do so. Whenever she felt her unwelcome thoughts inundate her psyche and she was deluged by an unforeseen fear, she chose to stay back until the ebb phase began. But today she was sensing a juxtaposition of another desire, unwitting of her conscious mind—she wanted to go to a place filled with people—the city museum.
“Why is that memory popping up?” she pondered. Her focus swaying back and forth from her childhood to the current day—pictures of her entire life and today’s task, swinging in front of her computer screen.
“What’s written in this mail, again!” she spoke aloud, a reminder that the screen reflected her today, the very moment she was in, with ample mails to answer to. Everything else was just in the head projecting itself outwards as if wanting to be seen. Why was she feeling like so, was yet to be explored by her as she chose to discard the investigation process more often than not.
Other than awards and recognition at work she could be aptly bestowed with the noble award of bottling down the things which incessantly grappled with her self-control to flee away from the interiors of her mind.
“Ah! That silly museum,” she chuckled, finally yielding to the memory in hopes that it will go away after getting due acknowledgment. But the memory wanted more than just the attention to it’s existence. Sammohini couldn't see a single word written in her mail, and did what she had never done in her entire career. She drafted a mail of ‘feeling sick for the day’ and before she could question her professional integrity, her fingers fired the send button.
Crowded by self hatred and anxiety she froze, unable to even breathe momentarily, until her paralysis was shaken by the sound of the email notification. A reply from her manager to ‘take proper rest’.
“What a humble, gullible man he is,” she felt ashamed while thinking like this.
Her actions though didn't show much shame as she hastily got ready for an outdoor activity—a visit to the only history museum her city had, located some five miles away from her home.
“But people!,” she reconsidered while hanging in-between the door and the exit. And then she headed out. She was not a person of whim but today was a queer day. Thus she reasoned, being an expert in not giving a detailed fuss to her thoughts.
She headed to her cab she availed and hopped inside. All the while during her ride she remained calm, undisturbed. Deaf to the songs which were playing inside the cab, the chaos of the traffic, and blind to the bright light of the day, as if medicated by an anti-depressant.
After an hour-long journey she reached the city museum. Getting out of the cab she paused for a moment to take a deep sigh. A sigh one would take before meeting an ex-partner. The gigantic, archaic architecture of the history museum posed a doting view of the centuries bygone and her own life expended. There were quite a many lovers of history hustling beside her to get into the building with curiosity in their minds. Nobody seemed as bored as she did, though it didn't feel like a carnival to many others as well, who were just there to waste another moment of their life for reasons unknown to them. Some young couples had also chosen the place to display their fresh affection towards each other, while hardly recognizing the grand souvenirs of time which were standing silently and equally uninterested, in front of them.
Her public anxiety hadn't yet poked its head out from her heart, for she felt as if she was invisible to all the people around her, who were too busy among themselves to notice a fatigued woman crawling in the museum aisle like a snail.
“What am I doing here?” finally her consciousness woke up. Before her front brain, the CEO of her being could use veto to not address the question, she found herself standing right in front of the “Samurai Armor”. Ten feet in height, and a two meter wide, the beast stood smugly, enclosed in a bullet-proof glass case.
“How modernity has advanced, now all the antiques look foolproof safe with a 24/7 surveillance and high-tech, anti-theft materials,” she reminisced, recalling how the same museum looked like an uncared-for structure when she had visited it as a child some thirty-three years back. The glass encasing looked like it would break at the whiff of a good adult punch, some already had crack marks upon them and nobody was around for vigilance while a meager amount of people hounded mutely like ghosts in the aisles. It looked like a haunted building back then and it was laughable, now she thought, that her school chose it as a recreational activity for five year old kids.
“Five year innocent, feeble minds—take everything on its face value, literally,” she thought and a rush of blood surged inside her like somebody walked past her grave. “A weird old adage!” she wondered, what that might mean when ancient people quoted it.
Gazing at the “Samurai Armor” blankly, she noticed a subtle reflection of a human form in the glass-case. Turning around instinctively, she was hooked for a moment seeing that face. How very familiar that man’s face appeared to her. For an instant she was taken aback thinking it is some colleague at work and she got caught red-handed in her act, ready to get fired and embarrassed after being ripped off of all her awards.
Putting an end to her catastrophising, the man softly spoke, “Hello Sam! Remember me.”
“Sam!” she uttered back equally slowly. No-one called her that because she never told anyone to cut her name such, ever since she left her school and her residence along with her parents to settle in a far part of the city, far-far away from all the neighbors and teachers and kids of her class. Her father was bound to his job at that time otherwise they could have left the city itself after the incident. She herself planned multiple times to abandon the place once she became a self-dependent adult but somehow the idea of facing an entirely new city with thousands of strange faces choked her desire to move away.
“How are you doing? It’s a surprise.” His humble voice once again broke her reverie. She remembered him. He was Sam, Sam Dakosta. He was the only christian kid in her class when she was five. Was he her best-friend? He had told her as a kid that he wanted to feel nice by knowing there’s another Sam in the class, cutting her name short and modifying its pronunciation. He never gave underlying reasons, nor she asked, behind the niceness of that feeling because five year old kids don’t do that and don’t ask that as well.
Her eyes twinkled, the light playing with the tears which were not falling down her face.
“Long time!” finally she spoke out loud, a reminder she needed to get away from the situation and be in her present. She started moving briskly, Sam followed.
She could feel as if Sam wore the mammoth Samurai armor while walking a little behind her. She wanted to run away, screaming but here she was smiling back at him, welcoming his company. She sped her pace hopelessly hoping Sam would disappear like a stalker would, but here he was, her long forsaken best-friend, matching leg to leg with her, marching like they used to when kids.
In her attempt to run away she unwittingly invited him in the park adjacent to the museum, with a nice bench as if made just for them, to sit under the kind shade of the Asoka tree.
It was the start of the summer of 1998 and peak heat was yet to dazzle and puzzle the city. The air hadn't gone cruelly dry yet and the breeze still carried the memories of the winter with it. Sam sat on the bench and so did her friend, Sam. She could tell he wanted to close something, which was left open decades and decades ago. She chose to fit herself in the medicated by anti-depressants role and sat blankly, calmly next to him, undisturbed by the storm which wanted to rise from within her guts.
“How have you been? I hope you did well and are doing the same.” He answered his own question. It felt like rhetoric and she chose to just listen. He consumed a lot of air before speaking again, “You know after you left, I used to wait at the school-gate for you, where we always met and had our candy bars together.”
She was about to smile when he went on again, “It’s funny because even after getting older and well aware that you weren’t there, I used to always hang on to that spot for a while before heading home, thinking you might accidentally bump into me.”
She had to swallow a lump to look normal and ask in a rather unaffected tone, “So, how have you been?”
“I tried a lot to find you, for twenty years I did. Then I got settled and had to move to a new city for work, but I never gave up on looking for you. My wife told me I shall find you when God wants it to happen.”
He stopped speaking as if to look at her response. She hid it well—her dislike—that he told her wife about her life and that he didn’t answer her initial question about his well-being.
P.S. This is a story I left incomplete. It’s not autobiographical but it has an element of a true memory of my visit to a history museum when I was five years old. And I couldn’t use that memory and weave it properly in the story. I hope someone can take it home.