Deven Pandey vs. Sankalp Shrivastava (Round 1)

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BROKEN PROMISES
(Sankalp Shrivastava)

I am standing alone in the street, as the girl of my dreams walks away from me. We both were hurt, with tears filled eyes telling the state of our shattered heart. We loved each other, hoping to spend our life together. But as time went by those hopes were dashed, pain was all that we could gather. We thought our love could take them through every trial, it could fight any adversity. But little did we know that sometimes in a relationship, love alone is not enough to survive. It needs hope for being there for each other; it needs Promise of not changing a bit, being in love always & forever.

Promise, in a literal sense it’s just a word denoting assurance made by someone to someone. But to each individual it’s something much more than a literal term. Promises are filled with dreams that we wish to attain, Promises are filled with hope that we want to fulfill. A Promise could turn out to be center of universe for a person; A Promise could be a thing which a person lives by. A Promise of Love, A Promise of a beautiful life, A Promise for being together till the end of time, A Promise to be in love till that last blink of eye.

I too lived my life on the base of such promise. It was an age old story, Boy met Girl & they both fell in love & promised to be together always & forever. It’s amusing how we circle our whole life around someone based on a feeling of love. Each & every step is choreographed according to wishes of your partner. It all looks like a dream attained, a promise fulfilled. But like life, such promises are also uncertain. One moment you might feel like you are in heaven living your life full of bliss & than suddenly out of nowhere it all falls apart due to one Broken Promise.

My life was a testimony of such Broken Promises & all those were broken by me. My girl loved me like anything, she trusted me with her life and she gave her all to make our relationship work. But when it came to reciprocating those efforts, I failed her in each & every step. Initially it was all good; it was like a honeymoon period. We came together & sparks were instant. Numerous dates happened followed by intimate moments that could really not be put down in words. In a way whenever I was with her, it felt like we were meant to be together. Whenever we came close our souls were in unison, nothing else mattered at that time. In short it was a perfect love story.

But problem with Perfect love stories is that they are only limited to fictional world. In real life how so ever perfect a relation might look in the beginning, with time that thin layer of perfection is surely broken by the weight of reality that strikes it. Some relations tend to survive that strike, but most succumb to it & thus begins the unraveling of reality which no one really sees at the start of their relationship. Same happened with us, but only thing different here was that in our case, every screw up brought up by me.
First came, the blow of succumbing under the pressure of my career. For a person, a real one to one with life starts when they start their career. That is the time when you are let out of the cocoon formed by your parents & put out in the real world to find out what you really are made of. It comes with the kind of responsibility which could challenge the mould you are made of & turn you into someone totally different & that is exactly what happened to me. Our relationship started when we were in college together, for 1 whole year I was just a guy who studied with her, a guy who she was madly in love with, a guy who understood her even when she was silent, a guy who stood by her how so ever worse the situation may be. But when I started working all of it changed; from being an understating person I turned into a jerk who took out all the frustrations of my work on her. I shouted on her, mistreated her; put her through hell that I was going at my work. All she wanted from me was to open up to her about my problems, but all I gave her was abuse for trying to interfere in something she could not control. All she wanted was to cure my tensions; all I gave her was misplacement of anger that should have been put out on someone who deserved it. I never wanted to change into what I had become at that time, but reality was that I did change & that change struck the first blow on the mirror of our relationship.

Second blow was the lies that followed the first blow. At the start of our relationship, the main base of our relation was the honesty we kept with each other. In any relationship, being honest with each in the first block on which the building of your whole relationship stands. Sharing the deepest secrets, being honest about every small moments of your life, these are the base on which any relationship stands. So honesty was the base of our relationship too, both of us shared our deepest secrets, our fears with one another. We were honest about every moment of our life to each others. But as time went on that honesty went away with it too. She was still honest with me at that time, but I began to keep things from her. It started with some small lies, like lying about my where about, lying about the time I would arrive at some place. But slowly those small lies turned into a habit of a serial liar. As time went by all I did was lie about things, like I never gave an honest answer about what I was feeling at that time or I always lied to make an work related excuse whenever she wanted me to do something I didn’t wanted to do. Telling a lie gave me a way out on many confrontations too, but the thing about lie is that when the truth about them comes out than there is only one outcome that is going to happen. I too suffered the same fate as other lairs tends to face, I lost the trust she had on me, I lost the credibility I had in her eyes & most importantly I lost the hold of my relationship to let it slip into the pits of wilderness.

Being complacent in life is easily the biggest crime you can commit against yourself. Complacency results in lost focus, lost desire to fight for something & when that complacency creeps into your relationship it means road ahead is going to be not something you should look forward to. When we started our relationship I did everything in my might to make every moment special for her. It was like I planned each moment of my life for her only. Cooking those half baked meals for her, bringing her gifts for no reason; taking her out for a date out of nowhere; constantly telling her how much I loved her. With time, of all the things that changed in me, all the lies, all the crass behavior I displayed towards her, one thing which led to all the problems between us, was my complacency towards our relationship. After wooing her in every passing moment; somehow i had crept into a space where i had started taking our relationship for granted. Somewhere in my heart i became complacent about her position in my life. In my view she was never going to leave me, she knew how much I loved her so how could she leave me. Now that i look back, this was the root cause of every problem that came between us. I lied to her, mistreated her only because somehow i was convinced in my heart that she not going anywhere. I had taken her for granted & perhaps this was the mistake which led me to a path where it all went wrong for me. I became complacent about her position in my life & that indeed was the final blow that our relationship could take.

Today as i stand alone in this rain, seeing her walk away from me. I really want to stop her; i want to tell her how much I love her. But i can’t, because for all the love i might have for her, it was not enough to make a relationship work. I failed her; I failed our love by being a condescending jerk that ignored the sole purpose of loving someone. When I started loving her i made a promise to myself, I promised to make every moment of her life special for her but in reality what I did was exact opposite of my promise.

Treating the one you love well, not breaking their trust by lying to them & most importantly not taking them for granted, these are base of any relationship. Love may be the soul of any relationship, but these elements are the frame in which that soul exists. Without them, love might only take a relationship to a certain level, beyond that it’s these elements which helps solidify any relationship. It’s a promise that two people make with each other when they get into a relationship & breach of any one of such promise tends to weaken the bond & in my case that bond was breached slowly but surely by the innumerable promises i broke.

So even if I had a chance to stop her from going away, from my heart i could not bring myself to stop her from going away from me. She had gone from hell to make this relationship work; she had suffered a lot just because she loved me & even though I loved her, i could never make her go through all those torrid times again. What i have become is never going to change, this is who i am right now & this is who i will be always. She does not deserve to be stuck with a person like me, who lied to her, mistreated her & took her for granted. It’s time she moved on with her life away from me. It’s time she spends her life with someone who not only loves her but also keeps each & every promise he makes. Because of all the wounds we might have on our body, nothing pains more than a Broken Promise.

Hope you find Love soon, just like i did in you.
Love You Always & Forever.

Rating – 65/100

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ऑटो वाली
(Deven Pandey)

चिहुँकना स्वाभाविक था ! दृश्य ही ऐसा था , ऑफिस से छूटने के पश्चात ‘शीतल ‘ को घर पहुँचने की जल्दी थी ,
ऐसे में ऑटो भी नहीं मिल रहा था ! शाम के वक्त कहा ऑटो खाली मिलता है मुंबई में ?
बेचैनी से नजरे दौडाई तो एक ऑटो रूकती सी प्रतीत हुई ,चिंता की लकीरे थोड़ी कम हुयी माथे से .
‘’बैठिये मैडम ! कहा जाना है ? ‘’ रिक्शा में से जनाना आवाज ने शीतल की तन्द्रा भंग की .

शीतल को लगा मानो उसे वहम हुवा हो ! उसने झुक कर अंदर झाँका तो ड्राईवर की सिट पर एक चालीस वर्ष के आसपास दिखने वाली महिला बैठी थी ‘’मैडम ,चलना भी है या यही खड़े रहना है ?’’ महिला ड्राईवर ने कहा .
‘’आ ..हा हा चलना है! ‘रबाले ‘ चलना है ’’ अपनी हैरानी को प्रत्यक्षत छुपाते हुये शीतल ने कहा ,और रिक्शा में बैठ गई .
महिला ने मीटर डाउन किया ! और रिक्शा स्टार्ट की ,एक ही झटके में रिक्शा शुरू हो गया ,शीतल को अभी भी यकींन नहीं हो रहा था के ड्राईवर महिला है .
‘’ मैडम आप हैरान लग रही है ‘’ महिला ने कहा .
‘’न .नहीं ऐसी कोई बात नहीं ‘’ शीतल ने मन के भावो का साफ़ छिपा लिया .
‘’ मै जानती हु मैडम ! यह आज का नहीं है ,रोज का है ,मुझे तो आदत हो गई है अब इन सबकी ‘’
उसे बात करते देख शीतल भी थोड़ी उन्मुख हुयी .

‘’ लेकिन आप रिक्शा चलाती है ! कैसे मैनेज करती है ? मेरा मतलब था के यह तो पुरुषो का क्षेत्र माना जाता है ,और आप इसमें अपनेआप को सहज महसूस करती है ? ‘’ शीतल ने अपने मन की बात कह दी .
‘’ मज़बूरी सहज होना सिखा देती है मैडम ! और हम आप जैसी पढ़ी लिखी तो है नहीं, इसलिए हम जैसी औरतो के लिये सिर्फ नौकरानी और झाड़ू पोंछा वाला ही काम मिलता है ,अब मै झाड़ू पोंछा लगाने से बेहतर रिक्शा चलाना ही समझती हु ‘’ कहते हुये महिला के चेहरे पर तनिक गर्व की अनुभूति साफ़ दिखाई दे रही थी .

‘’ घरवालो को कोई दिक्कत नहीं हुयी ? आपके पति ने विरोध नहीं किया ?’’ शीतल के चेहरे पर हैरानी के भाव थे
‘’पति नहीं है मेरे ! सात साल पहले बिमारी के चलते गुजर गये , दो बच्चे है एक लडकी और एक लड़का दोनों पढ़ते है ,उस समय परिवार वालो ने मदद नहीं की ! नौकरी की तलाश में गई लेकिन ज्यादा पढ़ी लिखी न होने की वजह से हर जगह झाड़ू पोंछे के आलावा और कोई काम ना मिला ,तब अपने गहने बेच कर यह ऑटो ख़रीदा ,चार हजार रूपये देकर ऑटो चलाना सिखा ,और तब से चला रही हु ‘’

‘’ओह्ह ,सुनकर अफ़सोस हुवा ‘’ शीतल ने सहनुभूति जताई .
‘’कहे का अफ़सोस मैडम ? जो होना है वह तो होकर रहेगा उसे हम रोक तो नहीं सकते ‘’
‘’परिवार में किसी ने कुछ कहा नहीं ? ‘’ शीतल ने फिर से सवाल किया .
‘’ सब को नागवार था मेरा रिक्शा चलाना ! मेरे देवर ,ससुर ने बहुत मना किया ,हमारी इज्जत मिटटी में मिलाएगी क्या अब यह सब करके ? लोग क्या कहेंगे ? ‘’

‘तो आपने उन्हें कैसे मनाया ?’’ शीतल की उत्सुकता बढ़ रही थी .
‘’ मैंने नहीं मनाया किसी को ! किसी ने मेरी मदद नहीं की जब मुझे जरूरत थी ,बच्चो से बाप का साया हटा तो उन्होंने भी मुंह मोड़ लिया , तो मै उनकी क्यों सुनती ? बच्चो की भूख ने परिवार की ईज्जत का खयाल ही नहीं आने दिया जेहन में ‘’ महिला के शब्दों में भारीपन था .

‘’ अरे आप ईस गली से क्यों जा रही है ? मेंन रोड तो उधर है न ? ‘’ अचानक शीतल ने रिक्शा को रास्ता बदलते देखकर कहा .
‘’ मैडम आप चिंता मत कीजिये ! ईस गली के पार भी मेन रोड खुलता है ,भाडा उतना ही लगता है ,आपसे ज्यादा किराया नहीं लुंगी ‘’ महिला ने साईड मिरर में देखते हुये कहा .
‘’लेकिन आप सीधे रस्ते के बजाय यहाँ से क्यों ले जा रही है ‘’ शीतल के इतना कहते ही वे गली से निकल कर मेन रोड पर पहुँच चुके थे .
‘’मैडम वहा मेरे लडके का स्कूल है ‘’ महिला ने कहा .
शीतल को थोड़ी हैरत हुयी .
‘’लेकिन ईस से आपके रिक्शा चलाने का क्या मतलब है ? ‘’

‘’ मैडम जब मै शुरू शुरू में रिक्शा चलाती थी ! तब मेरे बच्चे सरकारी स्कूल में पढ़ते थे तब वह रूट अलग था ,बाद में मैंने पैसे जोड़ जोड़ कर उन्हें इंग्लिश मीडियम में डाला तो वह स्कूल रास्ते में पड़ने लगा ,जिस से मेरे रिक्शा चलाने पर मेरे बेटे को शर्मिंदगी होती है ,उसने मना किया है मुझे वहा रिक्शा चलाने को, उसका कहना है के स्कूल के बच्चे जब देखेंगे के उसकी माँ रिक्शा चलाती है तब उसे शर्मिंदगी होगी ‘’

शीतल एकटक उसकी ओर देखती रह गई ,
‘’ लेकिन यह सब तो आप उसी के लिये कर रही है न ? आप रिक्शा नहीं चलाती तो उसे ईस स्कूल में पढने का मौका भी नहीं मिलता फिर भी उसे आपके रिक्शा चलाने से शर्मिंदगी होती है ? ‘’ शीतल ने भावनाओं पर नियंत्रण रखते हुये कहा .
‘’बच्चा है मैडम वह अभी ! समझ नहीं है उसे .
शीतल को कुछ कहते न बना ,वह बस उस महिला को ही देखती रह गयी .
‘’ क्या आपकी बेटी कोई समस्या नहीं है ? ‘’
‘’ नहीं उसे कोई समस्या नहीं है ! वह तो मेरी ही रिक्शा में स्कूल आती है ,उसे अच्छा लगता है जब मै उसे स्कूल छोड़ने आती हु ,मेरे बिना आने को तैयार ही नहीं होती ‘’ उस महिला के स्वर में थोडा सा गर्व का भाव था .
‘’ क्यों ? क्या वह बच्ची नहीं है ? नासमझ नहीं है ?’’ शीतल ने पूछा तो महिला चुप हो गयी .
‘’ मैडम वह बेटी है ! उसे समय से पहले समझदार होना पड़ता है ,बेटो का क्या है ? वे तो हमेशा नासमझ बने रहना चाहते है ,इसलिए जो गलती मेरे माँ बाप ने की ! वह मै नहीं दोहराऊँगी ,मै अपनी बेटी को अच्छी शिक्षा दूंगी ताकि वह कभी भी किसी पर निर्भर ना रह सके ,और अपना जीवन आत्मसम्मान के साथ बिता सके ‘’

महिला के शब्दों में द्रढ़ता थी .
शीतल और कुछ कहती उससे पहले उसका स्टॉप आ गया .
‘’ स्टॉप आ गया मैडम ! पच्चीस रूपये हुये ‘’ महिला ड्राईवर ने कहा .
शीतल ने ऑटो में बैठे बैठे ही अपना बैग खोला और रेजगारी ढूंढने लगी .
‘’ हां ! यह लीजिये आपके पच्चीस रूपये ,आपका नाम क्या है ? ‘’ शीतल ने जाने से पहले आखिरी सवाल पुछा .

‘’ज्योति ‘’ महिला ने मुस्कुराते हुए कहा .
शीतल पैसे देकर मुड़ी ,और स्टेशन की और बढ़ गई .
स्टेशन में प्रवेश किया ही था के उसने देखा के ‘ज्योति ‘ ने उसे रुकने का इशारा करते हुए आवाज दी .
‘’ मैडम रुकिए ‘’ वह दौड़ते हुए आई .
‘’ क्या हुवा ? ‘’ शीतल ने पुछा .
‘’ ये आपकी अंगूठी गिरी थी मैडम ,शायद आपके बैग में से ! वही लौटाने आई हु ‘’ एक चमकती सोने की अंगूठी शीतल की और बढ़ाते हुए उस महिला ने कहा .

‘’ ओह ! हे भगवान , आपका शुक्रिया ,धन्यवाद ‘’ शीतल ने कहते हुए पर्स टटोला और एक सौ का नोट निकाल लिया .
‘’ यह क्या है मैडम ? ‘’ महिला ने सौ का नोट अपनी और बढ़ते देखकर पुछा .
‘’ आपने मेरी अंगूठी लौटा दी ! कोई दूसरा होता तो कभी नहीं लौटाता , सोने की है ,तो आपकी इमानदारी के लिये ‘’
शीतल ने कहा तो ,महिला ने सौ का नोट विनम्रता से ठुकराते हुए कहा .

‘’ मैडम मै पैसे नहीं ले सकती ! मै अपनी बेटी को और बेटे को इमानदार बनाना चाहती हु ,आत्मसम्मान की बात की थी मैंने ,तो भला मै अपने आत्मसम्मान से समझौता कैसे कर सकती हु ? इमानदारी को पैसो से मत तौलिये .आपने धन्यवाद कहा वही बहुत है , चलती हु मैडम बिटिया इन्तजार कर रही होगी ‘’

कहते हुए वह स्टेशन के बाहर चल पड़ी .
और शीतल सौ का नोट लिये उसे देखती रह गयी .
समाप्त .

Rating - 62/100

Result - Sankalp Shrivastava wins round 1 exhibition match against Deven Pandey.