Just a little harmless fun

...Notes from my cell phone...(sometime in the month of June  2005).

Mumbai traffic provides you with enough time to look around- you want it or not! I looked at that dark young woman sitting on the triangular pavement, attired in a shabby blue worn out sari. Her head placed oddly over her crossed legs; messy hair covering half her face.

She seemed a bit irritable; her left hand went inside the dirty polythene lying next to her, groping frantically for something while she scratched the insides of her right ear with little finger. She finally found what she had been looking for-a ball pen refill. She put it inside her same ear n started scratching with it. I felt like telling her it could hurt. Imagine a guy with laptop getting out of auto-rickshaw and telling a beggar on the road that! I passed the idea. She seemed to enjoy it, itching does that to you. May be I should tell her that, why am I so conscious of what people think?

A small child slept peacefully next to her wearing a torn half shirt n nothing beneath. Was that her son? She suddenly looked up, straight at me n her eyes locked with mine. There was something hypnotic about them which held me on. For a beggar on the road that was quite some attitude. As easily she burst into a smile, embarrassing me. I quickly looked away. Does it matter who you ought to be –I guess the attitude is from within.

I stole a glance at her again, she took that refill n brushed it gently, teasingly on the sleeping child's bare legs causing him to shift uncomfortably in his sleep. I realized she couldn’t have been her mother .A mother would let her child sleep peacefully. He must have been her nephew or her younger brother or someone else's child she must have been keeping a watch on. I kept staring at her, waiting for the traffic to move on. She had dark but clear skin with sharp features, her smile was bright n eyes had a certain spark. She didn’t seem to be unhappy with life or begging on the roads. I started wondering what kind of life they must lead. What did things like education, sports, entertainment n marriage mean to her? She was perhaps aware I was still looking at her so with a sudden glance she caught me again. I decided to play along. Still with eyes fixed on me, she slightly shook her body in a way so as to let her palloo fall from the front, showing her ample cleavage. I have seen enough women do that in my lifetime...I couldn’t help noticing she had firm n young breasts. My eyes perhaps stayed there a wee bit longer than they should have. But her next reaction caught me completely off-guard. This time she giggled at my response n I could feel my cheeks turning red, but though embarrassed I couldn’t help grinning sheepishly. The traffic finally moved, her teasing image lingering in my head for a while...

In spite of all the hardships she endured, she found time to be playful, she had an easy smile n she had discovered the effect of her blatant youth on men n found that amusing rather than embarrassing...She was not, unlike most of us, trying, but actually found happiness in small things…having just a little harmless fun!

Let me tell you a lovestory...

..pages from my diary…

If you can define Love- you have probably never been in love!
If you have never been in love- you can’t be human… not that only humans are capable of loving but they are at least blessed with the power to express it in a thousand ways..
And if you aren’t a human…this story isn’t for you…

Everybody falls in love…with someone or other…at some point in life- for no apparent reason. And everybody has a love story…well …almost everybody…!
Too bad for those who don’t…!

As a matter of fact, a love story is never actually a story but simply an experience…it’s basically moments…incidents…a series of events…
A story in its structure ought to have a beginning …middle…and an end.
…But mine has neither a beginning nor an end.

…It’s a journey originating from nowhere and leading to God only knows where.
Like this girl…whom I barely know...

(...to be continued...)

...when the rainbow comes out...

...excerpts from my diary (2005)...
 
In the month of July I cried more water than all the dark clouds in the grey sky…

I thought they were my true companion on this endless painful journey…but then they too died on the way and on a Sunday morning I woke up alone, without tears for the first time in a year…

It was scary…

I was getting so used to them.

Then one evening shuffling through my books, I came across a piece of paper she had scribbled upon “I love you”…I stared at that small writing in red, three innocuous words that sometimes become your story of a lifetime. In seconds, the word ‘love’ on the paper became soggy and I realized my tears had not died but simply gone into hiding in some deep crevices of my heart.

They were back, n strangely I was happy that I was still human…may be she would also come back someday…

A light bird-feather glided in to my window and as I lay on my easy chair with myriad thoughts of her, it came down swiftly to caress my wet cheek. It stayed there, glued to moistness of that single drop of tear which had failed to slide down. Its touch reminded me of her soft lips I had felt many a times. I let it be there for a while… then removed it slowly still feeling its softness on my skin. I gave it back to the playful winds watching it fly away in to the rains now reduced to a mild drizzle…

It went around the Asoka tree and then Neem and then around the green leaves of many more trees in circles and circles…

I followed its movement from my window through the transparent curtain of gentle rains…its free flight…the way it moved…up and down…high and low and then it would suddenly swish to one side…Were the mischievous winds playing with it or did the rains somehow breathe life in to that lonely feather…Was it moving from tree to tree carrying messages of love or was it simply being playful…or was it telling them of all the sadness in my heart and the intolerable pain of parting that was of mine to endure…?

I thought about that white feather. Did some bird shed it on its own free will or did it separate from the bird out of its own wanting? Did the winds sent it my way to know the story of my broken heart and share my grief, so they could carry the knowledge of it with them to where ever she lived and detail it out to her? Did the merry yet wise winds know where to look for her or would they sense and search her out? They carry her smell to me often so they would know where she was? Or would they tell my story to many others of how one loved selflessly and then cried inconsolably, alone, while the world danced to the first shower of rains…

I would never know that…

But I know for a fact now that wishing isn’t enough in life…it doesn’t translate into actuality of things, I have realized that bitter truth…for if that were so I would wish to fly out of my window like that feather and away with those little birds in the sky… floating and gliding on the air current; or mount on top of the grey fluffy clouds to sail where she was…to where she lived …and then as it would rain over across her balcony, and I would look down from the clouds ,my salty tears will mingle freely with the falling drops…as she would in laughter look up for the rains…they would fall up on her angelic face …trickling down her cheeks, on to her honey lips, and, at least one will find its way to her tongue and then maybe she would taste my sorrow…

As she would stretch her delicate beautiful hands to feel the sparkling drops…I would, high up in the sky on top of the clouds, beg to persuade its falling water to carry on its drops the small innumerable pieces of my broken heart…so that they too would fall and splash across her open palm…then she would perhaps understand what she has done to my fragile heart…breaking them into a million pieces…each one still loving her…

But nothing like that happened…the winds didn’t blow anymore instead quieted almost to a halt…it continued to drizzle but the feather I could not see any more flying, I strained hard and noticed it lying on one side of the small lane leading to my building…lifeless…may be it too eventually realized it was too incomplete once detached from the bird

…its destiny was to make the bird fly and not fly on its own

…the winds were just playing with it…tossing it around for their own gratification…

I know wishing alone doesn’t make things to happen…I know the rains this time would last much longer and the skies would for a while continue to remain grey n dark…yet I realized, like my tears, I can’t control my wishing too, so I wished again n yet again…that when they get over…she would be lying by my side…in my arms…her beautiful face resting up on my chest and her lustrous hair blowing freely with the winds…

…looking out this window when the rainbow comes out…