She was a journalist, recently passed out and started her career
with a renowned local newspaper. This was an all new beginning for her and she
was very ambitious and hard working. She was staying as a paying guest with two
of her friends who were working in the same newspaper. Time passed by and after
some months, the newspaper wanted to launch a magazine and the employees are
encouraged to put forth their ideas in the new project. The girl had something
in her mind but she was not willing to step forward as she was concerned about
getting rejected. As you can see, she always had a very good academic record
and she was very concerned about taking risk because she did not want to be let
down, ever. This might be the reason she had never been in a relationship or
never tried for one for she was scared that she would be hurt in the long run
or she did not find the person she wanted to be with, yet. However, one of her
friends put her idea in the suggestion box without apprising her and after a
week or so, she got a letter from the MAGAZINE PROJECT MANAGER that her idea
had been selected. CHEERS!!! She was asked if she would like to help the
magazine to carry out her idea. So she took up the opportunity and on her
request, the management allowed her two friends to join her on her trip to
BOMDILA in Arunachal Pradesh. There they met two young recently recruited IPS
officers under probation having their training in NATIONAL POLICE ACADEMY,
Hyderabad who had come to visit the place for the weekend as a part of their training
and staying in the GOVT MESS nearby. They became friends and planned to go out
for sightseeing together. The next morning they started off early and by the
evening they had travelled a lot and she had noted down many ideas about how to
write the article. Somehow she got the idea that one of the guys, Robin did not
like something about her. Now they had to climb up a hill but her friends were
tired and wanted to take rest. But she wanted to explore more about the place
as she wanted to write perfectly about it in the article. So she started off
alone to climb up the hill. When she reached the hill top and started writing
sitting on the slope, she saw Robin coming up from a distance. He had a good
taste in photography and took many snaps during the whole day. She asked him
reluctantly and almost directly if there was something about her he did not
like. He replied that it was not her but the project idea he did not like. He
opined that it was not a good idea in general but the place was aesthetic and not
many people knew about it. Once she would publish about it in her magazine and
it would only be the starting because this is the way magazines start exploring
and a place gets highlighted and loses its beauty in the process as people
start pouring in for business in the long run. But she tried to convince him
that it was not that bad an idea in the bigger picture. They became comfortable
with each other during the conversation and he offered to help her with his
snaps which were truly professional. It was getting late. So they started off
down the hill to join their friends. The next morning, before the girls could
get up, the boys had to leave due to some emergency in the academy. She got an
envelope with the snaps and a letter saying there might be some unrelated snaps
as he had processed some old snaps to redevelop them thinking he would sort
them out but did not have time to do so. The girls stayed there for a few days
more and at the end, when she started sorting out the snaps to submit them
along with the article, she got a picture which was not related to the article
at all but was very familiar to her. She kept it aside after a while, after
submitting the article she returned home and went through her childhood album
where she found another copy of the exact same picture which she kept aside to
see later. It was a picture of two nursery kids, she and her best friend Jeet (his
pet name). They took the picture the summer Jeet's family were leaving the
town. This was the last time she saw him but he was always in her mind as her
best friend. She jumped out of her chair when she intuited that it was Robin.
She suddenly felt happy and sad at the same time, happy because she had met her
long lost friend again in such an unexpected way and sad because he was so near
and she could not even recognize him and maybe she would never meet him again,
she had got a chance but lost it somehow. But a sweet smile came upon her face
when she thought that he also might remember her and that might be the reason
he redeveloped their so long old picture and there might be a possibility they
would meet again.
