The Fairy from the Portrait

Kanishka trembled with ill-concealed joy. She had been waiting quite some time now. At last she heard quick footsteps in the corridor and there seemed to be a gleam about the air outside. She waited with bated breath as the footsteps sounded nearer and nearer until they were almost outside her door.

Then there was bang and thud and a loud "OW!!! Grrrr!"

Kanishka jumped quickly and opened the door. On her doorstep there lay a fairy.

"Thank God she had wings.." Kanishka would say later "... for otherwise I would have thought it was just one of my prankster friends out to have a laugh at my expense"

Indeed, with glasses askew, loose T-shirt and jeans that were torn at the knees, the figure that sat holding its head with both hands could hardly fit human imagination of a fairy. Only the wings, and a soft halo gave away the fairy.

"Err...Hi, you must be one of those from the Portrait. Why don't you come in." said Kanishka, not knowing what else to do.

The fairy was shaken out of her daze and said,"Yes, I am Omega. We made an appointment in your dream...." again she became abstracted and started to look around for something.

"Have you misplaced something?" asked Kanishka

"Yes, I had brought a surprise for you, but I don't know where it landed when I fell." said Omega morosely, still looking all around. Kanishka spotted a squashed package lying at the far end of the corridor. She brought it over and said, "I think I have found my surprise."

Omega looked up, and heaved a sigh of relief, "Yes that's it. Go on, open it."

Kanishka opened the package expectantly. A shrill voice cried out, "OMEGA YOU CHUMP!"

Kanishka was taken aback to see a chocolate cake frowning at her out of the package.

When it realised it had shouted at the wrong person, the cake became embarassed.

"I am sorry" it said in a much smaller voice, "...but that Omega just messed me up."

"Err... umm.... sorry Choco" said Omega in a faltering voice from behind.

That seemed to anger the cake once again.

" "Sorry?" "Sorry?" You nemesis of all cakes! What good is sorry when because of you my nose is now stuck to the lid of this package?! I wish fairyland scientists would hurry up with that Anti-Omega spell. In the pipeline they say... but do we keep falling prey to the greatest terror of cakes till then? I ask you....."

It would have gone on but Omega shut the lid back on and gave Kanishka a wan smile. Kanishka stifled her laughter and ushered Omega in. The room cheered her mood considerably.

"Look at the old Portrait! I like the way you have decorated it." she said, switching the lights off and on, enjoying the greenish glitter of the radium stickers that Kanishka had put on around the Portrait That Never Teared. "We had good times here," said Omega, reminiscently looking around the room " chatting away till late, debating hotly about something, sometimes studying together, or watching movies while eating pastry from Mongini's..." Omega's voice trailed off.

Kanishka looked at the Portrait closely. It was a simple portrait, done by an amateur painter, but its mystery lay in the fact that it refused to tear, even though decades had passed after it had first been pasted. The young faces there showed years of closeness and camaraderie. The eyes were bright with joyful companionship. Kanishka had always thought it to be unaccountably beautiful.

A loud rumbling brought Kanishka back to the present. She immediately ran to the window, to see if it was cloudy. She would need to collect her clothes before it rained, which it was sure to, with such loud thunder.

"Err... heh heh... in case you are wondering, that was not thunder, it was my stomach." said Omega shamefacedly, "I got hungry talking about pastries." she mumbled.

Kanishka gave a snort and disguised into a cough, briskly walking to the cupboard in an effort to fight an overwhelming desire to laugh.

"Will you have Maggi?" she asked

"Oh yes, Oh yes!" shrieked Omega and gambolled over to the cupboard,"Oh look... there are Banana Chips.. and Bourbon Biscuits too! I will surely tell Vazz you keep this room better than ever she did!"

Kanishka smiled. Fairy or not, Omega was just the same as she had read about in the famous comic book "MEG(H)A LAUGH DIGEST" She was sure Omega and Mohini had their Tom and Jerry fights in fairyland too.

" So how did you get to fairyland?" she asked.

"That is a long story.." said Omega, busily munching a biscuit, "see, we were all ordinary people, but together we were Magic. An atmosphere of that mysterious power called Love brewed of itself when we were together. Once, long after we had left this college, we all met and were chatting, smiling and laughing, as you can only in the presence of those most beloved to you, when we felt dizzy all at once, and all fell unconscious. When we woke we were in a different land, breathtakingly beautiful and brimming over with joy... Yes joy, gladness and mirth are tangible in that land, just like air. But sticking to the story, we were pretty perplexed how we came to be there all of a sudden. The explanation came (you know, ideas float around there, beautiful, lucent ideas not thought of here) and it was understandable even to us mortals. It had been the result of a transition. You know Heisenberg's principle, you cannot predict the position of an electron exactly, you only know the probability of its being somewhere in some point of time. It is the same with different planes of existence. They all revolve around the ONE, just like atoms revolve around the nucleus. You can never predict where one plane will be, it could be at a different orbit now, some other orbit the other moment. In such a moment of transition, when the plane of pure love (or fairyland to us) intersected with earth, we happened to be filled with that feeling and so got transferred to that plane."

"Woah that's a heady mix. Spirituality and Science in co-existence" said Kanishka, her head reeling.

"Heh heh. Well, we were just too curious about what happened to the place where we all first met, so we have kept constant tabs on the college and this room especially. You seemed very receptive, so we contacted you in your dream. You know that's when human beings travel the other planes uninterrupted. Today I have come to meet you and give you this phial." said Omega, handing over a small phial to Kanishka, "It contains Love, it is our blessing to a place which blessed us with joys unimagined."

With a last bite, Omega parted, leaving Kanishka dreamily staring out, the phial carefully placed in a nook, to shower all coming generations of inhabitants with love and joy.

PS: This post is written to relate to you the story of a very special person, Megha (I didn't leave much to imagination on that point) who is, by turns, a joker, a wise scholar, a clumsy, innocent baby and above all who shares with me a very very special bond. Its her birthday this 24/7 and though I can't be there to wish her personally, I want to tell her through this blog, that I am always thinking of her and missing her terribly.