As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-raḥmatu llāhi wa-barakātuhu
I saw her again, passing by me like I do not even exist. She was the most beautiful girl in our part of the world which we all called our university. However, the thing was and is that she is beautiful in most parts of the world, hands down.
A village dweller like me was only there because I could only run fast for no particular reason. I was bad at studies, may be it is the studies from which I use to run. When I was growing up schools in villages were rare and you have to walk miles to get to your school, mine was no different. Since the inception of my educational career I am on my foot; which all jokingly call the gaya’rah (11) number. I do not know how many miles I have walked. The answer to this question is that “many”.
In our days, she use to be the only girl that use to driver her own car to the university. Female drivers are a norm now but back then in the year 1966 it was a big thing. Most of us seize to think about her when we use to look at her coming out of her car.
You guys live in an easier world. You can start it with a friend request and I was not even able to request her to get a side; many a times I changed my path just to avoid the possibility of talking to her. I have spent many sleepless nights thinking about how to start a conversation with her. I wished that some goons attack her so that I could rescue her. Though the plan was good until the rescue bit but where the entire plan gets failed was the point “what to say?” and “how to say”? Now, I think that had she said thank you, the things would have been a lot easier for me to start the conversation as I would have conveniently said “You’re welcome”.
Then I thought how about if her car broke down on a deserted road and I could give her a lift on my cycle. However, the problem that was bigger than the breaking down of her car was that until than I kind of had no bicycle and though I would have done it happily but I giving her a piggyback ride would not have complied with her idea of a conventional lift.
So, finally I thought of writing her a letter. Now another dilemma hit me and that was of language. Her convent education kind of made her weak in Urdu and my preferred language of communication was not even Urdu, it was Punjabi. I could try to write few lines and verses in Urdu to explain her, my mental and romantic condition but doing the same in English was a big ask as the longest letter I ever wrote in English was during my matriculation papers asking my father to send me 50 Rupees. She barely passed her Urdu and I have been literally an outstanding student of English that is in every English class I stood out of the class. There was a possibility that I could ask someone to write it for me but I rejected this notion for two reasons; one when it comes to her all of us (i.e. the boys) were competitors and two even if I send her a letter written by a professional letter writer (yes, they use to exist in those days) who is going to pay him and if she replies the cost of the correspondence was surely going to soar. I realized that it was easier to teach her Urdu than writing her a letter in English. This was my Eureka moment. I decided I will offer her Urdu lectures in exchange for English lectures. It was kind of a win-win situation as I was going to get English lessons and to teach her Urdu, I was surely going to study Urdu.
Even today, I do not know how I was able to get to her. Although, I contemplated on the words to kick start the conversation; a hi, a howdy or a hola but I do not know what get to me and I started the most important conversation of my life which was at that point of time was more important than an India-Pakistan summit or cooling down of the cold war.
However when I approached her I forgot all the other words and suddenly an “As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-raḥmatu llāhi wa-barakātuhu” came out of my mouth.
#CreativeWritingContest #2
