Bookmark 2 - Life goes on like pages of a book, one at a time, bookmarks help you keep track of what is important.

Bookmark 2

Sitting on a beach mat, Anamika flips through the pages of yet another book. The wind is strong and cool, and the beach is scattered with families clad in colorful beach wear, helping each other lather up in sunscreen. Leaving behind her crowded city, Anamika still carries her aversion to skin show and prefers wearing full sleaved baggy shirts with leggings to her beach outings. Playing at her distance are her husband Anmol and their 3 year old daughter Riya. Anmol is teaching Riya to build a sand castle as she tries patting sand looking at the other kids around. 
The end of Her, a beautiful title running bestseller in the reader community that Anamika had been waiting for. 
"Anamika, you can read the book at home too, come play with us." Anmol shouted out to Anamika as he watched Riya pick up shells and squeal with joy. 

"I'm loving the view from here, you two carry on, let me click some pictures and get back to my book". Anamika loved to see Anmol bond with Riya, his busy life left little scope for such moments and Anamika wanted him to have the most of it. Not to forget her aversion to sand and a general dislike to sea water, she loved beaches but from a subtle distance.

Anamika let the father daughter duo play and went back to her reading when her book mark got blow off by the breeze and landed a fey steps away. She quickly shut her book and pranced to pick it up, it was an old bookmark, seemingly handmade with a rather worn out tassle. Anamika picked it up, caressing the tassles and absentmindedly gazed at the horizon, blurring out both Riya and Anmol from her line of vision.

This was a gift, rather had been a keepsake souvenir of a long lost love, puppy love as 

her friend Roohi called it. 

Long ago, in what now seemed a different lifetime, Anamika had once fallen for someone. Someone her teenage self had even dreamt of marrying, ridiculous as the thought may seem now it had once been a dream. The very idea made her chuckle, could she trade this life she had created for herself with what could have been the life had she taken that one courageous step, a silly recurrent thought is all it was, she smiled. But a tear rolled out too none the less, there was a life that could be and there is a life that would be.

"Honey, you've been staring a little too much. What is it?" A strikingly bold, young-old woman snapped Anamika out of her thoughts. Donning a stark white bathing suit with curly grey white hair, she was beautifully old and surprisingly young. Anamika was awestruck by the woman's body confidence, something she lost after her baby and weight gain woes. 

"Girl, you will always be wanting to be somewhere else, some place you belong to or some person you think you'd rather be with." The lady smirked, almost like having read the thoughts Anamika was having a second ago.

"But, . .   ahem . . . . " Anamika did not have words, she felt exposed and yet comfortingly understood for the first time in ages. She stood dazed.

"But even if you were at the place or as I can see with the person you thought you are best suited for, trust me, you would still be thinking that maybe, just maybe you're supposed to be some place else. Maybe even this very spot right here, right now." The lady spoke with a reassuring conviction to which Anamika could'nt do much but stare with bafflement.

"That tassle you've been twirling around your fingers while the hard back book with a silver leaf bookmark gives a lot away.  I too was young once, just enjoy where destiny brought you. What is in the past is in the past for a reason." The lady winked an all knowing smile as she walked away dropping her sarong on her beach mat and going for a swim past Anmol and Riya, making a silly face at Riya to make her laugh.

Anamika walked back to her spot, carefully putting back her paper bookmark inside the book jacket, and sitting the book atop her picnic basket. Maybe the old woman was right, life may have taken away her first love and her chance to a high school sweetheart story, but, it had also given her Anmol (her best friend and confidant for life, the man  who loved her the most) and Riya (her little angel who she cherished more than life).

Bookmarks are more than bits of paper sometimes, they sometimes open a window for you to see in the past and other times keep you reminded of the length you have traversed, or pages you have come to. In life, it is good to look back at old pages, but it is important to keep moving forward and turning the next pages of life. Bookmarks just help keep us reminded of where we need to be present. 

To get handmade bookmars/cards visit www.instagram.com/rangwaai.