THE SEARCH, a story

It is a sultry afternoon. The rays of the setting sun have lost their intensity, but somehow the heat seems to oppress the inhabitants of Kolkata. Pia is looking at the sky, above the tall buildings. It is changing colour – white , red, pink, white, red, pink, grey and blue and black and…………………….. Her eyes are burning, due to fever or due to feverish anger, she is not sure why. Waves of anger pass through every vein of her body. She wants to revolt, her every organ wants to revolt, to break free from every constraint, but something prevents her from doing so…


This is but one of the many phases of depression she is experiencing these days. The heat-oppressed brain of hers does not understand why this happens. “Am I going mad?” Pia asks herself. No, it can’t be. What is it that she doesn’t have? A successful career, good salary, a host of friends……then why? Why is Pia upset? She tells herself, “I must go on and on and on and………”


Lost in the wilderness of thoughts , Pia finds her very self revolting. I want love, she cries and her cries sound hollow as they turn and twist in the recesses of her heart and fade in the arteries and veins. They remain unuttered and unsaid.


The phone rings. It is Neil. The voice on the other side had once acted as a soothing balm, caressing and healing every wound of hers. But now he has called to say ‘Bye’. A single word, yet it strikes her heart like a steel knife-this invisible steel plunges deep into her heart , twists and turns till drop by drop tears come out of it.

Six months ago Pia and Neil got to know each other while chatting on the net. In a month Pia’s life was different. Neil’s careful attention and passing praises made Pia fly to the seventh heaven. Floods of sms-es, phone calls and e-mails made her days and nights. Then one day…………. Thud! She fell from her heaven. Neil told her he was getting married to somebody, his parents had chosen for him. “We’re good friends, Pia, isn’t that enough?”


Damn Neil. Pia has forgotten. Okay, she loved or tried to love and lost. But she cannot accept this defeat. Defeat tortures her, terrifies her; she wants to be victorious. Did she ever love Neil? She wanted Neil to add a new meaning to her tedious life. But did she love Neil? Neil, the man? .......... She does not remember, she does not care. She created Neil in her imagination- he had taken shape, become misshapen, ugly and then faded just as the star…… The star, which Pia loved and talked to, has disappeared from the night sky. Pia doesn’t find it these days. Where is it? Where is it now?


Pia, don’t worry about it, don’t go to the edge of the roof to see the star. You want love, isn’t it? I love you, I carefully nurse you in my bosom, I feel for you. You are my creation, Pia. I am with you. Wait a bit, we’ll find a way towards salvation, I swear. I still have some ink left in my pen. Wait, Pia, WAIT………………



‘Life’ and ‘love’- both are words having four letters. Both start with ‘L’ and end with ‘E’. Any significance? What say linguistic scholars? Pia Mitra is found lying in a pool of blood on the street in the morning. She has fallen from the roof of her house. People are saying she has committed suicide.





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