Nala and Damayanti are my friends. They are very much alive and are having a life together. I take full responsibility of anybody saying the characters resemble them or anybody they know. Therefore, this post does not have any disclaimer!!
Damayanti....lets make it short and call her Minti and I have been close friends from our gradation years...say 11 years old friendship. Minti is very active on the fine arts part and me in the extra curricular activities. We hit off pretty well from Day One. While in a girls convent college, there is a zero-possibility of getting to meet any Nalan. (Oh..I forgot to tell you the significance of Nalan and Damayanti in Indian folklore. Nalan and Damayanti were gave birth to concept of love, love affair and love story in Indian folklore. They went through all turmoils, pangs of separation...even had a messenger assigned to them in the avatar of a swan but after all the heart burns and action, they lived happily ever after!
Now coming back to the Nala and Minti I was referring to..... They are like day and night....Minti is fair and Nala is on the darker side. They are opposites in every aspects: education, social and economical strata, emotional quotient (Nala weeps and Minti hands him the Kleenex!) and in every aspect you can think of!! So what binds these two, you may wonder! Trust me, your guess is as good as mine! But from Minti, I came to know he lets be who she is and supports her through the ups and downs! It sounds cliched, I know...but there is a twist to their story...here it is..
Nala knew Minti from her post-grad days. She was the creative, fine-art, theatre activist...she would speak in clear Malayalam and was the Best Actor for all the three years during our graduation...and as we predicted, Minti took Law to specialise in...and she chose the exciting Criminal Law for super specialising in. We were a group of 11 close friends. As earlier batches in every colleges, we all went our way...got married, divorced, had line-ins, kids, in-laws, new homes, careers in every walk of life and in a matter of 10 years most of us were 'settled' in some way or the other...except for Minti. She was busy with NGOs, counselling sessions, courts, law and criminals. Or we thought so....
One night I get a call from her. And then i come to know of Nalan! And what about him? Well, they been knowing each other for a long time. He was known as a good friend to her family. And he was married! Wow!!!....ehm....so now where does the story go? Well, Minti was responsible in getting Nalan married. When he did express his desire to wed her, her family objected as he was nowhere near the land-estate owners and politically active family of Minti...she was fair and he was extremely dark....she was a criminal lawyer and he was a constable in Kerala Police.....they objected. He was ready to take her away but then she objected and urged he gets married to the lady his family chose for him. Two days before the wedding Nalan promises Minti that he will touch no woman but her. And he kept his word. Before a week was over, his wife left him saying he is not interested in her...he sent her away citing behavioural problem etc...but Nalan kept his word to Minti.
Two years later, I meet them again...by this time I began to play a very serious part in their love story... It was behind my shadow Minti would slip from home and come to TVM to meet him....citing the reason of exams at Kerala University and telling her mom she is staying with me, they both would spend some time together....till he decided to divorce his wife. He did, by setting her up with her own cousin, with whom she was travelling in a car...he did feel very bad in spoiling her name, but Nalan had to do something to find a reason to file a divorce from his wife and marry Minti. By then, Minti too was convinced that she cannot marry or live with anybody else but Nalan.
In December 2008, they got married in TVM in a temple. No invitees, no family, no friends, no celebrations. But there was sheer joy of becoming one with one's beloved. There was the feeling of having got the loved one. There was a beautiful halo around them!
Without explaining more, let me wind up and publish this post! Got to tell you about whats not auspicious on a Friday! ;-)
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