May 1st, 2022

“Dude wake up!” “Dude wake up!” someone kept calling him out he can hear it faintly, but his body didn’t want to respond it was budging on the bed unable to get up, It was because of his inconsistent sleep timings, but to be honest it was a severe hangover, the banging of the door felt like someone is mining inside a cave and the dynamites kept going off. In this case, his head is that mining cave, he was not even capable of getting up from his bed, and suddenly the banging of the door ended, it felt amicable now, however, Danny did not care about anything and went back to sleep. The next thing he could feel was water splashing on his face, he woke up instantly and was in a surprise. “What the heck? , ahhhh this bloody headache,” screamed Danny with irritation and shock. “Look who is still alive!!” said Peter sarcastically. “Damn it peter! , what is all this about?” “What is all this about? , dude I have been smacking your door for the past 30 minutes.” Danny was still sleepy and his head hurt like hell. “I was sleeping dude, and how the hell did you get into my room?” asked Danny with confusion. “I thought something happened to you, so I climbed up your bloody balcony and you didn’t even lock your balcony door so it was pretty easy to break into your room, and you were sleeping, so I had to wake you up and this looked like fun.” “Ahhh, I am having this nasty headache, I was not able to wake up.” “That’s hangover you moron, and look at your room the entire community can party for two days straight with all of this booze.” “I am not drunk, I am sober,” said Danny his eyes were red and swollen. “You call this sober? , just look at your fucking eyes you look like you are stoned dude, you need to move on from Kathy, look at her, she is happy as hell and look at you!” “Do not talk about her, it’s not about her, ” said Danny, his voice fluttered by hearing the name of Kathy. “Then what is this about?” “I am just having a bad phase that’s it, now I don’t want to listen to a lecture about her.” “I am not here to lecture you, we need to go to the office.” “For what?” asked Danny. “I don’t know. The Editor contacted me yesterday and he wants us to attend a meeting today, now get your ass out of the bed and get ready we need to go, on the way we will take tablets for your stupid headache.” “Ok, fine! Give me 15 minutes.” They reached their office, Danny works as a Chief Cameraman in National Geography and Peter as the Director, by the time they reached the office the meeting was already started, they silently entered the room, his chief editor was giving a demonstration on forthcoming projects, he played some world war 2 footage and images and began to explain it. “The images and videos which you are seeing right now are from the Battle of Stalingrad, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki this war was considered to be the most vicious and devastating war in entire world war 2.” “Why was it so brutal?” asked Peter. “The war took place from 23rd August 1942 to 2nd February 1943, in this duration of 5 months more than 2 million people died in this war and these are only reported deaths, but the unregistered were much worse.” “But we haven’t heard about this war in history at all !” said one of the members in the room. “It was one of the biggest mistakes of Aldof Hitler. After Russia won against Germany's 6th army, Inorder to save his regime Hitler made sure the news screening about this war is obscured from Germany and the world, there are only a few accurate and appropriate information accessible regarding this war, more than 6 confederate countries of German and 4 confederate countries of Russia took part in this war, All of the countries had their selfish motives to hide this war.” Danny was bored with all this and asked straight forward “Ok, so why are we talking about this war now?” “Because this is going to be our next project!, We are starting a new program called Valours of WWII, in this, we will shoot documentaries about specific wars in World war 2.” “That’s a good idea, but you said this war has minimal information so how are we going to proceed with a documentary with such small data?” asked Peter. “I assume everybody in here knows about a time capsule, on the 30thAnniversary of the battle of Stalingrad the people of Stalingrad buried a time capsule with all of the sovereigns like, guns, clothes and some belongings of the soldiers who fought in the battle, after 50 years the time capsule had been opened, and in that they retrieved a Journal of a german soldier who wrote in detail about the war.” “Where is that journal?” asked one of the members in the room. The editor took out an old brown leather journal, it looked ancient and worn out from the sides, and on the cover of the Journal, there were initials M and R. “It was obtained by a private museum in the auction in 1992, after a long negotiation and some amount of payment we have acquired this Journal and when you will read it you will know it’s worth, trust me guys, this is not only about war, this journal also contains a story of love like no other!” “Are we going to make a documentary or a love story?” asked Danny with confusion. “In this case both, the documentary entirely revolves around Micheal, that is the name of the soldier, he wrote daily about the war and how he misses his life with Regina,” said Robert. Danny felt like he knew these names before, it felt like there was something unusual about that diary and those situations, his body went into a barren state and his mind was wandering into his subconscious and he could feel the chills. This was strange for him, Danny came out of the thoughts as he heard editor calling him “Danny, are you here?” “Yes, so what’s the plan?” asked Danny. “I’ll be your program Co-Ordinator from here, So we will go to all places mentioned in this Journal and reconstruct them and shoot a documentary, this journal only has details till german army surrendered to Russia, I need you to find out the after-effects of the war as well.” “Sure, Robert.” “Well this is going to be your room to prepare for the pre-production works of the documentary, I am leaving the journal here, I expect you to read this and come up with a good plot for the documentary which we can use,” said Robert and left the room. Danny felt it was an absurd idea and turned towards Peter “Dude is he serious?” “I think so.” “Come on dude, love in between war? What is he trying to show now? The love of olden days?” asked Danny. “I know this might sound strange, but I can see a possibility here!” “Like what? Another tale of lost love?” said Danny out of sarcastically. “Look, dude, we used to deal with only programs like selling junk, but now this is the real game! If we can prove It with this documentary we might get good projects further.” “Peter, this is bullshit man!! Love? I mean come on that’s the phoniest feeling that any person could ever get.” Peter glanced towards Danny and asked, “Why because of Kathy?” “I have told you before it’s not about her!” “Danny, you cannot pretend anymore that you don’t care when I know you care like hell about her, It’s over! you need to get over it.” “I am out of her life!” “but she is not out of your life!, and I think this project will go on for 2-3 months, if we put some distance between you and this place, it might help you to move on.” “I have moved on,” reassured Danny. “No you didn’t dude, I know you since college and you think you can hide it from me by wearing a mask? ” “It’s not like I still love her! It’s about how I felt, I can’t get over the fact that it still feels like I have been cheated on, used and dumped by her.” Peter took a deep breath he could see Danny’s pain talking about Kathy, he sat beside Danny and kept his hand around his shoulder and said: “She was never perfect for you, deep down you know that she is trash, let her go.” “I am trying,” said Danny with a low tone. “But not hard enough! will you trust me on this?” “You know that I trust you,” reassured Danny. “That’s good, so now I want you to focus on this project, I’ll go and get the team ready, once go through the articles and all the information present here. Make sure you prepare a plan of action so that we can work accordingly,” said Peter and left the room. Danny sat for some time silently, his mind was empty and as Peter said deep down he knew she was not good for him but that doesn’t make letting go of love any easy, he still remembers what she said before she left him. “It’s over Danny! We are not meant to be together, I found someone better.” It’s not like he loved her with his whole heart, but he loved her with all that he had, deep down Danny still feels dreadful about that relationship, Every day he imagines how things would have ended up between them, If he got little more serious about that relationship, but it’s too late now to alter, Danny gets back into reality and begins to look into the facts and information of Battle of Stalingrad. He made sure to collude all the important things which he could find about this war on the internet, after some time his interest was shifted towards the journal, by seeing that journal he felt a Déjà vu. The journal felt familiar to Danny, he slowly took the diary into his hands and began to flip through it.