Love sometimes triumphs over death. Death is an omnipotent truth. Getting born gives one a certainty about life. And that is death.
Love can happen in life. If one is that lucky, true love can dawn on that person. Oindrila Sharma is one such lady. In her short life she has seen a love that is rare in today’s world. Having too many partners, hopping from one to the other, telling a lie to each of them and faking “I love you” are the underlined ingredients that make up today’s reality. Distortion, contortion, corruption invade life at large. Love cannot remain an exception.
But Oindrila, a television actress, has seen an exceptional love. She has become a denizen of a world where honesty, faithfulness and commitment count much more than anything else. In Sabyasachi Chowdhury she has found a lover who can stay with her through thick and thin. Holding his warm hands, Oindrila could defy cancer and go on seeing idols from pandal to pandal; she could frequent restaurants for her favourite dishes and in his broad chest she could find room to rest her head in absolute peace.
‘You are the reason why I keep on living,’ Oindrila wrote in one of her Facebook posts just before her last admission to a local nursing home. She dedicated this line to Sabyasachi on his birth day. As a lover, Sabyasachi cannot ask for more. The line is more than a tribute to his caring, passionate, selfless, helpless, hopeless, hapless love.
Life is proverbially short. For Oindrila, it is pathetically true. At twenty four, she has to call it an end. Cancer spreads all over her body. She is forced to surrender, doctors’ maverick efforts notwithstanding.
“Dyakho aloy alo akash/ Dyakho akash taray bhora…..Ato anondo ayojon/ Sobi britha amay chhara… ,” sang Arijit Singh, Oindrila danced to it on Dadagiri. The host Sourav Ganguly came up to her and emphasized the line: Nothing has meaning in this pageant of joy without YOU, Oindrila. She smiled softly. The smile waned with her passing away.
Poor Oindrila may have a short stint, but she is rich in having a most precious eluding emotion on earth: love.
At a time when the government of Japan has issued a circular that the students must find out a day in a week to cry their heart out to bring back emotion in life, Oindrila-Sabyasachi get engraved in a saga of love. It is indelible. Because it speaks of emotion that is endangered in a world that only knows RIP and GIF to show its sorrows on high-end mobile phones.
‘Amra Jodi ei akaleo swapno dekhi..’ an urbane poet-singer once wrote. Oindrila-Sabyasachi give us that faint but real ray of hope that dreaming is still possible too in this waste land.