Stories

One morning a friend calls her up and says, 'Soni, I saw someone in Daman last weekend. Believe me, it was him. No doubt at all, he only had a long beard.'
Soni sets out to Daman. She gives a chocolate bar to her 6 year old daughter and tells her to listen to granny and not create trouble. She's not sure if she can find him but still goes in search of him.

This was a short story in kannada I read many years ago. It's one of the best pieces of fiction(?) I've ever read. The author is Uma rao, a freelance writer and copy editor and the name of the story is 'The path leading to the sea'.
Soni stayes in a lodge close to the sea in Daman. For the next two days she goes to every nook and corner of the coastal city hoping to have a glimpse of him. She remembers how he suddenly disappeared one day and never returned. How she had feared for the worst, how her mother would tell her, 'Soni, don't sit in a corner all day, you're pregnant, baby, this will affect the child, please come out, we'll go for a walk.'
Soni fails to locate him. In a last attempt she visits a very old jail in daman and goes through the records. NO luck. Then she goes to the adjoining cemetary. A young soilder from portugal is buried there. She stands in front of his grave and imagines what his life could've been. May be he had a wife back in portugal who would sit in her balcony and look at the sea, waiting for the ship which would bring him back. Maybe she was pregnant then.Maybe she's still waiting.
The next day she returns to Mumbai. On the way she stops by the cemetary and goes to the soilder's grave. She places a bunch of flowers on the slab and reflects for a moment about her desperate search for someone whom she may never find. She prays for the soilder and returns without looking back, wiping away a tear.
Before boarding the bus, she buys a chocolate bar for her daughter.

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Feeling uninvolved in the work. May be I want to completely know what I am doing. A dialogue from a movie rings somewhere in my mind--'those who don't give results should not be in the team.'

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Time's on a hurry. Weekends come so fast, before you battle an eye lid, another weekend is here.