Nico-Tar Urge

Nico-Tar Urge

 

The small, six-by-four smoking room looked like Delhi in a winter morning.

Smoggy.

Smothering.

If not for smoking, nobody would like to be there even for a minute! Worse still, there weren’t any chairs to sit. Trust me, with all the drowsiness and fatigue, I couldn’t stand more than a minute.

Men drowned in their smart phone screens, cigarettes tucked between their fingers, welcomed me with as much indifference as I sometimes show to people talking about binge-watching web-series. The only aberration in the room, was this woman, standing far opposite to the entrance, with her gaze fixed at the wall to her right. Holding a pack of Marlboro Gold and an iPhone in her right hand, she was staring at the wall-mounted electric lighter. Her Hamlet-like dilemma, I thought was: To light up the next one or not?

Curse my stealthy, sluggish, perverted eyes! Wish I could stop them from measuring her up!

I slid my left hand into the pocket of my jeans for the packet of Gold Flake Lights. No, it was not an impulsive action, but a deliberate one, aimed at causing visual distraction. To avoid being measured up in turn.

The brunette had a square face and wore slim fit jeans with a white casual shirt and a pair of black stilettos. She had earphones tucked in her ears, listening to god-knows-what while a beige reccine jacket rested on her arm. Resting against the ledge in the smoking room, she looked every bit of a professional model stepped out of a fashion magazine. The brown leather bag slinging from her right shoulder was a perfect match to her savoir vivre. I got a closer look at this woman as I walked up to the lighter. Now with her head turned towards me, she was looking at me as if she had seen someone from Andromeda. Raising her eye-brows, taking her earphones off, standing upright in a jiffy, she was trying to say something. I looked back into her eyes. Hazel eyes.

I knew those eyes!

I wish I had all the time to aesthetically describe this woman to you before I move on, but then, I write from the crematorium, and so, not the choicest premise for aesthetics. This shed, where I’m sitting now and gradually becoming conscious of censure and ridicule of my co-mourners, is meant for conjuring the past, the forgotten and the dead. Whereas, this woman, Junali Rajbongshi, was now as much alive in front of me, as she has been in my heart, mind and spirit for about two decades, since I had first seen her.

“Jun...Junali!” it was an involuntary outburst. I couldn’t hold it back. It is difficult to hold back things like cum and outbursts when you come across such a knock-dead beauty as her. I bet Junali could pass off as one of our Bollywood divas. More so because, she carried her convent-schooling background, impeccably good English and love for Bryan Adams wherever she went to and whatever she engaged herself in. Among Indian things, she loved Vadilal’s strawberry ice-cream; among our own Assamese stuff, winters in Jatinga Bird Watching Tower, canoe-rides in Deepor Beel and Bohag Bihu in April. These were the quirks I had grown accustomed to. Eighteen years ago.

She now looked slightly different with her straightened and brunette hair, and with a slightly bigger face than it was years ago. It was, indeed, the Junali Rajbongshi I keep searching for on Facebook whenever I am bored of stalking what’s new about other people’s lives!

My muse of teenage, my muddle of manhood, this woman – Junali Rajbongshi – was my original first love that actually happened!