Free Gone By by Beatone Hajong Page A

plucking a book out of rack.
    “Well, She was beautiful”.
    “Yes I do know that. I’ve seen her photograph”.
    “What else more you want to know” I jerked.
    “Everything about her”.
    She held a book in her hand flipping some pages out of it. Perhaps she got the necessary article which she needed. She stood looking at my side. I stood stable leaning against the metallic rack with my hands folded crisscross.
    “So, tell me about her” her voice shrilled out again.
    “Hmmmmmm!!!!!!!”.
    “What!!! Hmmmm!!!!” she mocked.
    For that moment literally I felt not to words out about Anannya. Kept myself mum at any quest of question Isha demanded about her. I felt it would be much better going back and tell her the every detail about the girl I love. Somehow I could diverge the topic of our discussion.
    “Did you get the book material” I asked her.
    She smiled tentatively for she knew my intentions of denying to talk  about Anannya.
    “Yeah! I found the necessary article” she grinned.
    “Let’s move out then”.
    “Yeah ! for sure”.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Five
    ....................
     
    So, we started to walk back to the ground floor through the aisle of rack. She led first through the stair way down and I followed her behind. Isha thought of borrowing the book for days. It was a huge volume almost weighing more than a kilo. Somehow I could see Isha handling it’s weight. “Give me, let me hold it” I politely implored her to offer me to let her feel the lightness.
    We stood in a queue together along with other people for registering the borrowing days. I asked her to take the chair that laid empty few meters away from the queue. Instead I would toil the work for her. She looked little exhausted and covered with dryness on her face. And I stood in a queue waiting for my turn for the registration. She glared at me. At some points she widened to smile. So I accompanied her through some gestures from my point of position. She smiled and gestured me back with some action through her hands. Her gestures went unknown out of my head. For long we continued to talk through gestures as the library forbade our loud voice. Finally, my long waiting turn came before me. I had to write down some formalities filling up a form. Some charges were put into action for the number of borrowing days. So, I did paid the cost of charge. Isha wanted to borrow the book for a month, since her trip to India was for sure a long one. After processing all those formalities finally the book is now under our custody.  I walked off towards Isha where she remained seated.
    “So, you got it done” she smiled.
    “Yeah” said I casually.
    I handed her the book to glance out once. She flipped out one last time some pages to look out for any fault.
    “I thought of shifting to Goa tonight” she captioned her voice suddenly.
    “What”.
    “Yeah....what do you say”.
    We were heading outside. She pushed the glass door outward and stepped out. I took her prints to follow out. Finally, we were out of the huge mansion library, stood protected under the entrance roof from the extreme heat of the sun.
    “Are you sure you’re shifting to Goa today” my voice fumbled.
    “Thinking so”.
    I stood with rays of dejection now. No idea about the reason ,is it Isha’s decisive plan of moving to Goa or the detachment of bond that would create with void all over again in my life. I stood humble and silent with less frequency of my breath.
    “What’s wrong” she inquired with concern.
    We followed to walk and our steps added together. “Nothing” with my casual notation.
    “Are you going to come with me”.
    “Where?” I sought to know.
    “ What..where..Goa”.
    How would I say no to her, that’s the impossible thing I couldn’t do. I firmly agreed with contentment within myself.
    “Surely”.
    “But under one condition”.
    “Now what” I demanded.
    “You got to tell me about Anannya”.
    “Agreed to it”