The Woman I Never Knew:

Today being woman’s day, I was wondering who in my life had made me feel the most special in my life. Not only special for being a woman but special because I was me. I thought thought thought and continued thinking, till suddenly a few scenes of a childhood I chose to forget, flashed right in front of me. I was shocked because nobody including me, would have ever remembered a face like hers. She was my special woman. Special, not only because she gave me the girlish pleasures of being famous, but also because she had changed my life. Changed not only one aspect of my life, but many, all she did was she had entered it in the most graceful of ways.

Karthika was her name. She was two years younger than me and I was completing my last year in secondary school when I first realised she existed. I was 14 years old and she was 12. Puny , thin and dark is all I remember of her. Today I don’t even remember how her voice sounded a decade back. I hate myself for who I was, arrogant, naughty and unapproachable. But at the same time , I took extra care of the less fortunate ones, who sulked in a corner, ran away from people and hid behind bus seats. Karthika was one of them.

One day, just like other days I had managed to catch the bus while it had almost reached the exit gate of my school. Running across the whole length of the bus along with my other two friends, I reached for the last row, close to the back door. Hoping I would sit on the stairs of the bus, I dumped my bag onto some junior’s seat which was apparently vacant. The little girl near whom I threw my bag, picked my bag up and kept it closer to her than her own bag. I found it a little odd when I noticed how she was gripping my bag with her little hands. Thin, nimble fingers that could not even wholly grasp my bag.

I didn’t bother too much, thanks to my evil friends who enticed me with other glamorous talk. I kept hearing people mutter “Karthika Karthika” in regular intervals. That is when I first mapped a name to that little face of hers. Karthika. She had short hair , well oiled and neatly combed onto one side with hairpins to fasten them in place. I looked at her and realised she was smiling. I asked her why she was smiling and she just shook her head. Damn it! A junior did not answer me??? I was angry. Then I cornered one of the people who had been muttering Karthika’s name. Anandhi, I remember. Wisely sat close to her after karthika and my friends had got off the bus.

Then I heard a story that rocked me to my very foundation. There was a girl named Karthika in 8 B, who loved me more than her life. Love??? I wondered! Yes. She either wanted to be Aparna or wanted to be my best friend . The concept of best friend seemed very abstract to me then, but I still continued listening to the story Anandhi was telling me. Karthika had no friends but she wanted none either, except Aparna. She caught place for me every day and cried if somebody asked her for the place. I laughed when I heard this , childish arrogance I assume. How come a girl who is known to like me so much had not even uttered a single word to me in the 6 years that I traveled in that bus? This was beyond me.

Proud as I was, I went around telling everybody that I had a fan and she “loves” me more than her life. What a clown I had made her! I was oozing pride all over the place. After that day, I noticed how karthika looked at me, with no words in her mouth but loads of questions in her eyes. I did not budge. I had pride. But over the last 5 months of my life in that school, I tried giving her lots of chances to ask me whatever she wanted to. I would play “Truth or Dare” with my juniors in the bus but still in vain. I felt like I had stolen her power of speech. I got fed up and on my farewell, when I was all decked up in a sari, I went up to her and her friends and asked them to stand with me for a photo. After the photo session I asked karthika why she never opened her mouth. She said something that I didn’t understand then….I wonder if I will ever understand it. The only words I heard in what she said was “ miss you beautiful bold talkative lots friends best friend”. The grammar and the completez were up to me to do. But I was immensely touched, though my pride did not allow me to express that sort of emotion.

I walked out from the portals of that school as a strong, well mannered, brilliant, confident and warm woman. All because of that one girl, Karthika. She had made a difference in my life way beyond anybody had consciously known. She had given me a new identity( the only girl who had a FAN) , she had helped me discover a new confidence( to face my enemies and my friends), she had given me an ego boost that I did not transform into pride, she had given me the strength to fight people who did not trust me and she had taught me what platonic love is.


I received blank calls for two birthdays after that and I always knew it was her. She never said anything but my caller id said it all. On the third birthday(my 18th birthday) I did not get her call. 2 years I did not redial that number on my caller id but on Jan 1st 2006, I did. Nobody picked up the call. I forgot all about it in my New Year frenzy. March or April of that year I woke up remembering her after seeing her in my dreams. Smiling with her yellow teeth. Called that number that was in my slam book, someone picked it up and when I asked for Karthika, I only heard silence. After the moments silence the girl(her sister) asked me who I was and when I said that I was her senior Aparna, there was a vacuum in her voice and she uttered only “ If Karthika was here , this would have been her happiest moment. She really liked you a lot”.

To me all this happened like as though it was a dream. The part where time slows down and everything is heard only as muffles. She was gone. Dead and gone. She had blood cancer all through her last years of school. I wept like I had never wept in my life. Knowing that I can never thank the girl who made me who I am today , was something beyond unthinkable .I felt like I had lost my best friend though I had never even spoken to her properly once. All this happened only because both she and I , were born women and because we went to the same girls school. She was my synonym of unconditional love and that is what I still feel when I think about Karthika, the woman I never knew. This is my ode to her. Thank you Karthika, you are really someone who I truly miss. Thank god we both were born as women. Happy woman’s day!