Story Based on Nila's Diary: The Telescope

 Story Based on Nila's Lost and Found Diary: The Telescope

The Phone broke the slithering silence to wake Nila from her day dreams. She quickly grabbed the phone before the second ring began.

“Hello…”

“Nila, I will be late, we have a production issue at the office. Let us go out tomorrow... Ok?”

“Ashok, today is Friday, you got two days to fix the problems. I am tired of sitting alone in this tiny apartment”

“Sorry... Daa...This is a major computer system. The whole country uses it. I got to go, Bye”

“Ba…yee”

Nila felt like crying, she turned the phone off and threw herself in to the couch angrily beating herself on the forehead. As usual she complained to her favorite God, Lord Krishna’s statue on the TV top.

“I tell him all the time to move out of this place to a better one. He never listens, just blames his H1 Work Visa.  Oh... I forgot, why am I telling you all this? Your ear drums must be burst after listening to those sixteen thousand whining wives of yours.”

After turning the TV on and off few times impatiently with the clicker, Nila got up, slowly walked towards the window. She opened the blinds pulling the string on the side like the curtain before the show. 

“Ladies and Gentlemen Welcome to Nila’s World” the lonely extrovert announced sarcastically. Apartment’s wide living room window facing the busy Penn Avenue always made her feel, she is in a crowd; crowd that kept her busy all the time.

“Oh…No…, the whole window is covered with moisture.  May be it is my cooking without the exhaust fan causing this.”

She looked through the hazy window at the cars coming in to the parking lot. The bump at the entrance made the cars to jump up. Head lights made shadows of the naked tree branches like alien figures on the moist window. With her index finger she drew a smiley face with long hair and a dot on the forehead between the eye brows. Under the drawing, she signed her name ‘Nila Ashok’.  Giggling she went to the kitchen to grab paper towel.  She started wiping her name and cleaned in circles sparkling, the whole window.

“Wow! Look at you Moon.  You look so pretty tonight? You seem to like the fall and the snow better than summer, right? 

Hey Cinderella of the skies, I am going to give you company the whole night.

You might be wondering, why I am all alone on this Friday evening. You know Ashok right? Do you want me to tell you more?  He and his job... You know... His company will shut down without him working there” She kept laughing. The moon, as if to tease her disappeared behind a piece of cloud for few moments.

Nila opened the window turning the crank handle a bit. Cool air rushed through the opening to embrace her. “It feels so good” Nila breathed in the cool air. The chill made goose bump all over her. Without taking the eye from the captivating full moon, she stepped back and stood behind the telescope placed near the center pane. Adjusted the tripod and wiped the surface of the blue ‘Orion’ telescope, a gift from Ashok on her 23rd Birthday. What can be a better gift for someone who lives in dreams whole day, letting the mind wander with stars and the clouds?  The telescope made her busy making, friends with the stars and the moon quickly. She engaged in long conversations, sharing her little sorrows of boredom and fantasies with them.

‘Parrot’ that is what Ashok calls her when she forgets to halt her chatterbox. Whenever Ashok was late from work, Nila journeyed in to the unexplored universe dissolving into its mysteries.  She looked for the new born stars, plotted them on to her note book connecting stars to form different figures and shapes she loved.  She identified the stars referring to the Astronomer’s pocket guide; then named the newly found ones with that of her friends’ names. She wrote logs and stories of her encounters in the diary hiding behind the cursive revelations.

While taking break from her discoveries of unknown truths of the skies, Nila humbled herself by looking down in to the lives of earthly dwellers. She looked at the people walking through the busy Penn Avenue and could easily recognize almost everyone there. To identify them, she gave fictitious names to them from the Greek mythology and Ramayana. She envisioned wars between the Greek Gods and the Monkey Forces from Ramayana in the busy street and the apartment parking lot.

Nila spied on every one who passed through the territory under her control. Successfully, she predicted who would come to the street next and knew what bus they take. Looking in the bathroom mirror, she imitated them and mimicked their mannerisms. When people were absent for few days, or displayed bad temper for an extended period of time, got her really concerned. 

With constant practice, she even gained the skill to move the telescope quickly to identify faces in fast moving cars. ‘Is this a skill or an addiction, not leaving any one alone, and invading the privacy of their minds?’  Remorsefully she thought, and then shoved it.  Reading minds and predicting their future with her telescope became part of her routine. On weekends, she tried to hide her obsession but at times instinctively touched the telescope focused to the Penn Avenue. 

Ashok never noticed or acted as if he didn’t; maybe he wanted her to be busy when he is deeply lost untangling the spaghetti of software code. He truly believed, without him nurturing the system, the company would be in deep trouble. Literally, he even took the water cooler jokes aimed at him way seriously. “Ashok if you are hit by a truck or a train, our jobs and the company will be in serious trouble”. He avoids driving his Toyota Corolla near big trucks and is extremely cautious at the rail road crossings.

Nila pointed the telescope at the sky and focused on a distant star. Her mind drifted through the memory lanes. Her eyes quickly turned soggy, and saw no stars or the planets, but one star that was glowing more and more every moment she looked at it. It has been a while she enjoyed the brightness of the moon, rings around the Saturn or the beauty spotted Jupiter with her telescope. Every time she looks through the eyepiece, saw only one face; face of her friend Shahana. The pretty face that came through her telescope lens, like a meteor…, then disappeared after spreading few glimpses of happiness in her life.

It was during one of those parking lot spy missions, Nila was overwhelmed in surprise to see someone like herself. She zeroed in on the starlit eyed beautiful girl with a teeny touch of gloom on her face. She was wearing a purple head scarf with scattered red roses embroidered on it. Nila quickly ran down the stairs to the parking lot, but the girl had disappeared.

Nila kept looking everywhere for the girl she saw through the telescope for weeks. At last, Nila’s search fruited in the congestion of the noisy laundry room where she met Shahana for the first time face to face. The pungent smell of the bleach and the leftover detergent powder smudges did not impede her excitement. She felt like seeing her long lost best friend after a very long break. 

The delight of finding a friend by surprise in a time engrossed in solitude made Nila the talkative, nervous and scramble for words. The smile and the unfamiliarity in a world of familiarity turned in to thick friendship in few moments.  Shahana hardly spoke English. She went to school only till 4th grade in her home town in Bangladesh where the elders forbade girls studying further. Thanks to all the Hindi movies they both watched prior coming to US, they had few words in common that came handy.  They created a perfect communication medium with smiles, laughs and gestures mixed with the scarce words they knew.

They met every day in the laundry room, where when the machines removed dirt from the clothes, they relieved their sorrows. As days passed by, when the last snow fell on the ground melted away, they took their friendship outside the building. They spent time in the park and walked in the street. For hours sat in the bus stop, as if they were waiting for a bus to a journey that would never ends. The right bus never came to pick them nor did they stop waiting. They wandered around the apartment buildings. Nila laughed and talked way more than Shahana could listen. She just kept smiling hiding all her pains under the colorful scarf in her head.

Despite Nila’s compelling attempts to invite Shahana to visit her apartment, she never showed up. She just kept smiling at her invitation. Nila was not sure what she meant, but was always hopeful. Whenever she asked about her husband, Shahana gave the same response and kept quiet. During the last conversation she noticed her eyes tearing while mentioned about her husband. She asked nothing more about him after that incident.

Nila was testing her newly acquired embroidery skills on the crochet when she heard a sudden knock on the door. Shea got little nervous, quickly stopped working, then walked to the door. Through the peep hole she looked and screamed in joy.

“Shaha...….” Quickly she removed the chain lock to open the door.

“At last you came to my home!!” she pulled her in.

Shahana tried to smile but the sadness overpowered her. She just hugged Nila and cried. She wept for long time holding on to Nila.  Nila heard foot steps on the hallway coming closer. Patted on Shahana’s shoulder and closed the door with the other hand.

They walked inside.

“Sit Shahana. Is everything OK”

She cried with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Nila didn’t know what to do but to cry with her. She couldn’t control herself, wiped tears with the tip of her sari, grabbed few tissues and gave them to Shahana.

Shahana removed her head scarf. 

“Oh.. No…!!” Nila saw the red eyes and the marks on all over her face.

She closely looked and felt with her fingers the face blackened by beatings and the burns with cigarette.

“What happened Shahana?”

She cried. “Sameer.., He beat me up and tried to kill me… I ran away”

Sameer, her husband was a butcher at the international market store. He cut and cleaned fish from morning to close. Some days he didn’t come home. One of her friends said, he had another woman near his work and wasted all his money gambling. Shahana unloaded all her pains and shared her grief with her best friend.

Nila applied Neosporin and stuck Band-Aid over the marks. She tied the scarf for her.

“You are so beautiful Shahana! Merciful Allah will make him good, I will pray for you both.” Smiling, Shahana left to her apartment.

It was on a Sunday just before Christmas, Nila saw her for the last time. Shahana was going somewhere with her husband. Prior to getting in to the car, she looked back and waved in the direction of Nila’s apartment.  Nila didn’t know if she could see her or not, but thought everything has changed for the better.

After that day, Nila never saw her in the laundry room or elsewhere. Being extremely concerned, she thought of going alone to check on her in the apartment.

“May be I will go with Ashok when he comes. 

That won’t be a good idea.., I will have to tell him everything and he may get mad at me.” Her wavering mind didn’t let her make any decision, but it was attempting slowly, to transform her to a new person that she could never be.

It was mid night, Nila and Ashok jumped out of the bed, ran to the window to look at the Police siren and Ambulance. The fire truck was parked with lights flashing near the street. They watched from their bed room window. A stretcher with a body covered in a cloth was brought near the ambulance. Nila shaken, felt like her heart stopped and body paralyzed when she saw Sameer walking behind the police officer. He had the facial expression that of a hungry clown. It was hard to make out if he was laughing or crying.

“Shaha…” Hysterically Nila ran, pushed opened the balcony’s sliding door.

“What’s wrong Nila, you know them? Why don’t you go to bed? Everything will be all right”. Ashok rubbed her back to calm her down. Silently, she walked to the living room, looked through the telescope at the street. The ambulance and the police car went away flashing the lights. Next day while she searched through the galaxies, Nila saw a new star among the familiar ones.  It was staring at her and was beautiful like her friend. She named it ‘Shahana’.

It is almost a year! A full moon like this took Nila’s friend away. Time was racing faster than ever, snaring precious moments in to foggy memories. She focused the telescope on Shahana and began her never ending chatter forgetting everything around her.