Reflection👥

26. Maybe

"What may have been is just a possibility, 

a representation of what could have been now. 

What's gone however is gone,

What's done cannot be undone.

You may dream of something better,

That you had seen for your future.

You can wish and you can seek,

but there's one thing that can never face defeat;

it's what people call fate or destiny."

-Elegiac_Damsel.

________

21st September 

Third person's point of view:

The rain had bid adieu to the City of Dreams. Autumn was settling in, but the weather was far from pleasant. The city of seven islands, located off the coast of the Arabian Sea, witnessed 2 months of barely felt autumn, the weather resembling the same heat and humidity as one would experience during the summer months. The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi had just drawn to a close, after an 11-day-long celebration across the state of Maharashtra, and its capital city, Mumbai. 

There had been no celebration in the Mukherjee household. The festival had rung in very quietly, given they were in mourning. The almighty elephant-headed deity, the remover of all obstacles, had been worshipped with a simple lit incense stick and an earthen lamp. A single modak, his favourite sweet, had been offered to his image. The housing society where they lived, however, had collected money from each flat to ensure 5 days of festivities, the idol being a big one with a priest coming in twice to make obeisance to the Lord and to offer sweets to Him. Anindita had been home throughout the week, staying by Apurba's side, going in every day to BKC for a few hours to impart flight training classes.

It was a particularly hot morning. The maidservant, who usually came by twice to clean, had taken the day off, citing the impending delivery of her sister. The house was thus quiet with Anindita and Apurba in their respective rooms, one of them lost amidst the pages of a Bengali novel, her bleak world within the four walls of the home seeming emptier and slower than ever before, while the other was lost in the jungle of thoughts. 

A tensed and worried Anindita was frantically checking the status of her balance in each of her savings accounts on her iPad. She was sitting with an old notebook and a pen, using the last page to scribble in a manner incoherent and incomprehensible to any outsider. She knew she needed to spend more time with her mother now that her father was gone, or she would inevitably fall into a depression due to loneliness. She was in a severe dilemma given her job as an international civil aviation pilot and the long days of staying away from home. 

There were a lot of factors that she would have to consider. If she flew less frequently, it would only result in less income for herself, thus bringing down her monthly budget for household and medical expenditures subsequently. If she chose to fly domestic instead of international, she would either have to move her base to Dubai if she wanted to continue with Emirates, or she would have to get herself a job with some other airlines, something that she wasn't keen on doing.

Her forehead was creased again, the prominent vein in her temple starting to pulsate, her body reacting to the mental state of her mind that screamed stress. Her phone vibrated, causing her to shift her attention from the screen of her iPad. It was Satyaki calling.