Are you happy?

Rita and Seema were best friends since school....they sat on the same desk, ate from the same lunch box, read the same books, had crushes on the same type of guys, listened to same kind of music....and often spend the night at each other’s houses....talking into long hours of the night.

Both wanted to become engineers....and get into a high-profile company.

Needless to say like any two close friends...they also experienced their share of arguments tinged with shades of jealousy and fought over various issues....
But throughout .....their friendship remained....intact...at least till they grew up.

Both went to different colleges in different cities...but were in touch through lengthy hand-written letters that arrived...days after they had already shared any big or small news through STD calls...

While Rita had numerous boy friends in college...Seema was too idealistic to make boyfriends before “falling in true love”! Both continued to share the gossip about the various admirers they had in college and how they partied their weekends away!

This continued till the final year of college when suddenly Rita’s parents asked her to meet their friend’s son .... their prospective son-in-law! A few months later, an astonished Seema went to attend Rita’s engagement party. She was amazed at Rita for getting into an “arranged marriage” and couldn’t understand how she could have agreed to marry a rich businessman who was 6-7 years her senior....whom she hadn’t known before!

But when she saw Rita happily busy with her engagement preparations and her trousseau...she decided to only wish her the best.

Anuj was nice...friendly...and even had a good personality.....but.....he was definitely not one of the types that Rita and Seema had always seemed to like...

A few months later ....right after her engineering, Rita and Anuj got married...and a month later Rita happily called Seema to tell her about the “good news”. Trying to sound naturally happy for her, Seema congratulated her and for the first time in years....felt the distance between them....becoming wider and wider...

Seema couldn’t understand how could Rita give up all her dreams and aspirations and get married to some stranger....who belonged to a family of businessmen...where wives remain housewives...and mothers of their children for the rest of their lives...

Now years have passed....since that time....

Rita takes care of her husband’s extended family and her two children...and spends her free time in getting facials in beauty parlours, shopping at malls, and vacationing in Singapore and Bangkok.

Seema did get into a high-profile company...and is now head of one entire department of the company....She met her kind of a guy and fell in love....and had a “love-marriage” as she wanted...though sometimes....very rarely ...when she has a bit of respite from rushing between her hectic job, her child, her house....she can still glimpse the little ruminants of love that was once existed between her and her husband.

Both the friends meet once in a year...either at their children’s birthdays ...or in their summer vacations....

One such meeting happened recently...when they met at a coffee shop.

They talk and share stuff....while Seema talks about her office life and hectic schedule, Rita talkes about her leisure trips and shopping....

Soon the conversation starts facing long gaps of silence...where both assess each other silently....

While, looking at Rita’s manicured and painted nails and toes...Seema hides her own unpainted rough nails under the table and wonders...was all the hard-work really worth it?

Meanwhile, Rita thinks of Seema’s wonderful profile...and the confidence she seems to be oozing out while sitting in the coffee shop in her plain kurta, jeans and sandals. She hides her own flashy Malaysian sandals under the table...and wonders....where has her own personality disappeared?

Avoiding each other’s eyes...both keep talking of weather....of their children’s schools....and of latest movies.....till they can....but after a while....another long yet strange pause creeps slowly in....

Finally its time to leave....a bit reluctantly, a bit relieved...they bid each other goodbye....

The friends who could tell and ask each other anything in the world.... fail to ask each other the simple question that they long to know....

“Are you happy?”