The Quest

The train whistled although it didn’t start to move. Sudeep stretched his hands and put his travel bag on the top berth. He was getting back to his seat brushing off the dirt from his shoulder while the train began to move and something fell from his travel bag.

“Still have the habit to carry your favourite book everywhere?” someone asked. Sudeep turned his head in surprise.

“Leela, it’s you!” Sudeep couldn’t hide his astonishment. “After so many years; how are you?” he asked.

“I am fine,” said Leela. “How about you?”

“I’m keeping well,” said Sudeep. “Happy and content?” Leela thought to ask him but couldn’t speak up the words.

“What brings you here? I mean where are you off to?” asked Sudeep.

“Well, may be in a quest for happiness, like many others who search for the divinity,” said Leela. They both laughed. It was in their university days that Sudeep was known for his philosophical discourse.  

“You and your sense of humour are still the same,” said Sudeep.

“You haven’t changed either,” said Leela. “Maugham’s ‘Of Human Bondage,’ right?” she said picking up the book that fell from Sudeep’s bag.

Sudeep kept quiet. He was having a series of memories floating in his mind. There was a time when he was known as the adventurous young man or to some extent, a Casanova among the students. Everyone misunderstood him except for Leela. It was Leela who once asked him, “Why are you so restless from inside Sudeep? Is there something you’re looking for?” Sudeep couldn’t find the words to answer. He couldn’t tell her that he tried to find happiness in all sphere of life, be it in career, in relationship but ends up meeting nothing but mere triviality. And it’s the triviality that choked him. 

“Remember the girl in freshers’ welcome day who thought your mom was a writer?” said Leela. Sudeep came out of his reverie and chuckled.

“Of course, I do,” he said. Then he started mimicking,

“--So who is your favourite writer?

---Well, I have a band of them, like Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Maugham

--- Oh your mom is a writer?”

Sudeep mimicked the girl rolling his eyes and both of them burst into laughter.

Both of them fell silent after the laughter. It felt like the calmness in nature after the storm. Or may be before the storm. It seemed none of them dared to break the silence with the queries flooding in their minds.

“How is Shelly?” asked Leela hesitantly taking lead. She was still holding the book.

Sudeep kept quiet for few moments, and then said, “We are not together anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry Leela; you didn’t know,” he said.  

“Of course, I didn’t know,” murmured Leela. Deep down in her heart, she knew that it was her who knew about Sudeep. She knew even Shelly wouldn’t be able to erase the monotony of mundane life; to help him finish the quest, to attain satisfaction in life. If it wasn’t Leela, then it wasn’t anyone. But she failed to tell it to Sudeep while on board of a moving train; just the same way she failed to confess her unconditional love and devotion for him fifteen years back.

Leela began to flip through the pages of the book, as if she would have a vision of last fifteen years in Sudeep’s life from those pages.  As if it’s not the protagonist Philip Carey’s but Sudeep’s entire life sketched in that novel and she would know if it were going to be a happy ending the moment she turned the last page.

But her eyes got stuck in two random lines and she read it aloud without realizing others could hear her.

“This love was torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom,” Leela read it aloud.

Sudeep was looking at her. He started to talk to her in a soft voice. “Leela I was just about to….”  

“I have to get off at the next station,” Leela said hurriedly even before Sudeep could finish. She sprang on feet and began to tidying up her stuff. Sudeep couldn’t say anything.

“So, Mr. Modern man, enjoy your freedom, away from all bondage,” smiled Leela, handing over the book to Sudeep. She went to the next compartment saying her friends were there. Sudeep couldn’t even ask for her address. He just stared at the way Leela went. Then he sat down with the book but didn’t open it. Instead, he took out something from his pocket and gazed at it. It was a photograph. A photo of his four-year-old son. His heart swelled in affection. He put it back in his pocket and murmured, “This time you’re wrong Leela. The modern man now knows that his freedom lies within the bondage. My quest is finished and I have accepted the truth.”

Sudeep sat and opened his favourite book, “Of Human Bondage.” He began to turn the pages lazily. He almost memorized it after reading it over and over again. He stopped at his favourite line that said,

“There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.”