सावन बीतो
जाए पीहरवां
मन मेरा घबराये
ऐसो गाये
परदेस पिया तुम
चैन हमे नहीं आये
मोरा सैय्याँ मोसे बोले ना
मैं लाख जतन कर हारी
मैं लाख जतन कर हार रही
मोरा सैय्याँ मोसे बोले ना.…
Mora Saiyyan More Bole Na
Fuzon
She walked in wearing a long black dress, there wasn't much time to dress up that evening. She was a part of the organizing team for this event and this beach dinner was in danger of being rained out. As she was speaking to the folks from the hotel, guests started pouring in. Thankfully the rain didn't. Everything looked perfect, the food, the music, the decor. Someone came and tapped on her shoulder, she turned and saw a fellow member of the team. She saw the same look of relief on his face, the lightening and thunder had abated and looked like the rain Gods had decided to spare them this night. It was the welcome dinner for a three day event, and hence important. The evening was going well, she mingled with people from the team, it was so good to see all the people you work with in the same place, in-person and put a face to the person behind that email. While she walked about laughing, joking, asking people if they found everything ok, he continued looking at her. She was beautiful. The untidy way in which her curls fell from the hastily tied bun, the way her eyes darted from one corner of the room to the other, looking for things to take care of, the huge infectious laughter, like she didn't care if anyone was watching and those eyes, that matched that laughter.
They caught each others eyes once, when she was searching for someone, held briefly for a moment, she flashed her smile for a second and then her eyes continued on their quest and finally settled on the manager of the hotel. And she walked towards him.
She found an old friend from work and they talked endlessly, updating each other on what was happening at work and in life. Dinner was announced and they walked towards, the counter. After serving themselves, they looked around for a spot to sit, everything was taken, they walked towards the other side of the beach, near where the stage was. There were exactly two empty cushions, on a low table, they walked towards it and they sat down. He was sitting to her right. They introduced each other and he realised, they had written to each other on email. He thanked her for her help with answering his million questions. They hit it off immediately. They spoke about the conference venue, politics, work, people, India, yoga. She liked the way he held her eyes when they spoke, he looked right into them. It was something she did when speaking to people, and more often than not, people are afraid of looking into your eyes when you speak. But not him. He listened intently, was curious about the different ways of their country. After a while, they both started talking to other folks around them. When someone from across the table asked her name, she introduced herself. He looked at her and said, she had a beautiful name. She smiled and was about to say something when someone called out to her from the other end of the large round table!
The night rolled on, they both went about talking to different people and finally the crowd started thinning out. They had an early morning the next day. In bed with her laptop, she reviewed the plans for the next day and ticked off everything, she thought about the evening that had just gone by, everything seemed to have been perfect.Her mind suddenly took her to one conversation she had had with this one boy on the table. She found herself thinking about his eyes. She smiled at her herself as she bent to her left to switch off the table lamp and slid into her duvet. She loved hotel beds. They were always so soft and fluffy, like you were sleeping on a bed of clouds. Maybe this is how clouds felt. Or bales of cotton. Yes, that had to be it. She remembered how at her grandparents's place, they would pick cotton from around the seeds of the cotton plant (or shrub, it was a shrub, more than a plant) along with the field workers. And at the end of the day, they would jump into bales and bales of cotton and pretend to fly! Yes, hotel beds, felt like that. She willed herself to finally sleep.
While she was floating in cotton, two floors below, he lay on his bed talking to his roommate about the trip so far and what they were looking forward to in the next couple of days. They spoke about the evening party and how everyone seemed so absolutely awesome. They were both relatively new to the organisation, and everything seemed magical so far. His roommate asked him who the girl sitting next to him at dinner was. All this while he was staring at the ceiling, but at this question, he closed his eyes and tried imagining her. And as her face came into view, almost as if she were standing in front of him in real life. He said her name slowly. His roommate threw a pillow at him to tease him and that broke his reverie. A few more random conversations and they both switched off the lights next to their beds and said goodnight. In the darkness of the room, he saw her again, and heard her laugh and talk excitedly about something that was close to her heart. He smiled to himself and drifted off to sleep.
The next couple of days were busy. Making sure things ran on timely and smoothly. Thankfully for her, everything did. They met each other on and off throughout the event. And every time their eyes met, it bought with it a weird sense of anxiety as well as a funny feeling of being grounded. She felt like she knew him, very well. She was definitely attracted and so was he. But it was an office event, they were both busy with work, so no one took anything further. One evening, she was sitting with a couple of colleagues having dinner and he was in her line of sight. And she felt his gaze on her. She looked a couple of times, to his side, and found him talking to the folks he was sitting with, with a glass of red wine in his hand. But she would swear that she felt him looking at her. Or maybe it was her imagination playing up, this heart makes the mind go crazy. She shook her head, exasperated at herself and picked up her glass of red wine to take a sip and pushed that feeling down her throat.
The music suddenly picked up and changed to a local tune. He turned back to see the stage behind him, a dance performance about to begin. All the folks came forward towards the stage closer to the dancers. He turned to take his glass of wine and turned his chair to face the stage instead of the table, and he saw she wasn't at the table he saw her a couple of minutes back on. His eyes darted to look over other tables, he bent backwards to see if he could see her in her skirt with red and yellow flowers. She was no where to be seen. And then he turned towards the stage, his mind all over the place now. He took a sip from his glass and saw the skirt flutter in front of him to his right. Aah. There she was. Completely lost in the dance, her feet tapping to the beats, her left hand holding her glass of wine, while her right hand rested on her side, her fingers tracing the dancers movements, almost like they were directing the dancers on the stage. He smiled looking at her, she wasn't dancing, but in a way she was, he saw the dance reflected in the tapping of her foot, in the swirling of her fingers, in the slight way she moved her head to the rhythm of the drums. The world around him faded as he saw red and yellow flowers dancing along with her to the music. And his dream broke when the dance ended and the crowd erupted with appreciation. He set his glass down to clap, still smiling from the dance he was engrossed in, that no one but two people, him and her, knew was taking place. He turned to look at her, and found her looking at him too, he raised his eyebrows, tilted his head and raised his clapping hands to her side. She blushed and turned away.
The next day there was an excursion of sorts and everyone had to travel by the bus to get to their destination. She and him ended up being in the same bus. Bus journeys made her nostalgic. As she sat with her friend and they both talked and laughed about things, there was an underlying thought or feeling, call it what you may, deep inside her that was unsettling. Whenever that happened, her mind would then go on auto-pilot, making sure the exterior was completely normal, while inside, she got lost in her own world. And usually this zone was accompanied with her playing with the two rings on her right hand. Almost like they were her rosary beads that calmed her down from whatever was disturbing her. At one point, her phone slipped out of her hand and fell on the floor of the bus, she reached her hand to pick it up and noticed that he was sitting diagonally opposite gazing out of the window. She looked at him until the boundary of glancing and staring met, and then turned to face her friend. The thought that bothered her seeped back into her being, too far away to bother her externally now.
He was looking out at the sea and then the fields go by, saw the afternoon sun play hide and seek with the clouds. Taking in the newness and the raw beauty of it all. The person sitting next to him, touched his shoulder to say something and when he turned, he saw her lost in her own world. He could see her eyelashes flutter from the side, she was there, but she wasn't too. He saw her twist her ring, rings rather, playing around with them, her thumb rotating the two rings on her right index finger. He hadn't noticed the rings before. Was she engaged ? Was she married? But these didn't look like a wedding band. But then it could be anything, it could mean anything. Maybe he shouldn't be thinking about her at all then?
That evening, after they got back, all she wanted to do was see the ocean. She went for a walk along the hotel beach. The sun had gone down, day light still lingered on for a little while longer, but receding slowly nevertheless. She saw the colours of the water change with the change in the sky. She stopped at one spot, and stared at the ocean, the vastness of it. For a second, she wanted to go embrace it, to dive in. But before that urge could take over, her senses controlled themselves and she smiled at the thought. The day turned dusky and she sighed and breathed a long deep breath, taking in the freshness of life. On the extreme right was a hut out into the sea, connected to the island by a wooden walkway. A hotel staff had told her that it was nicknamed as the 'proposal point' of the island. At that thought, she closed her eyes, willed her mind to still for just one minute, before she turned back to walk towards her room. A couple of her friends were having tea and called out to her to come join them. She wanted to keep the sense of calm the walk had given her, so she shook her head and said she needed to get ready for the evening party, to get to the venue early to see things were running smoothly.
After a long bath, she was new again. There was lightness in her heart, she opened her laptop to play music while she dressed. She took care to dress that evening, selected jewellery that matched her dress, a batik print sea green dress with a very low back. When she steeped in front of the mirror, she smiled at herself and tilted her head to see the shine in her earrings. She picked the dark blue eyeliner she had and expertly ran it across her eyelids, close to her lashes. It made her sparkly eyes come alive. She picked up her perfume bottle and sprayed it behind her neck and wrists, grabbed up her wallet and phone and she was ready to leave.
As she walked to the bus that was to take them to this other hotel for the party, someone came running from behind and hugged her, she turned to see her friend and hugged her back. Her friend threatened to pull the tied ends that kept her dress up and she swirled as she backed away laughing. He saw her swirl and couldn't look at anything else. Almost like a goddess he thought. She began talking to someone else from the team as she joined the queue for the bus. He, still gazing at her, joined right behind them. This other guy from the team and she sat together and they were discussing something intently. He slid in the seat next to them, separated from her, by the aisle in between. She turned to look left and saw him, they smiled and acknowledged each other. He had taken to care to dress that evening she noticed. A pair of really smart shoes, well-fitted pants and his statement checkered shirt. He was about to say something when the guy sitting with her drew her attention to what was happening in the front of the bus.
The evening drew on and at one point she found herself standing alone at the bar. The was a game being conducted and she watched from afar, enjoying herself, laughing loudly at the crazy things that were being said. She picked up her glass, only to find it empty, a voice from behind her said, 'another round of gin and tonic?' She turned to meet his eyes, noticing them from so close for the first time, her eyes traced down his face, resting on his lopsided smile. All this in 2-3 seconds, when she realised she couldn't stare anymore, she smiled and looked to the bar to call the bartender and asked him for another round of gin and tonic, with cucumber, not lime. "So enjoying yourself?" she asked and from there started a conversation that went on for an hour almost, they talked about random things, her plans, his plans, bits and pieces of their lives. Each one hanging onto those tiny pieces of information, like they were something sacred, to be treasured and protected from this world before the forces come to tarnish it. With these snippets enmeshed in their hearts, they spoke on, about everything and about nothing all at once.
They walked towards the other end of the deck. Now alone, with the noise from the party far enough for them to be alone, but close enough to remind them of their limits. They looked at the ocean in front of them, like black liquid in the night, a few lights along the beach, that looked like jewels strung together. They pointed out the hotel they were staying at to their right and she pointed out the famous proposal point, that lone hut extending from the beach, out into the ocean. It was lit, "maybe, someone was going down on their knees with a question in their eyes tonight". She smiled while she said that, he turned to look at her and asked her about the rings and if she was married or with someone, she smiled sadly and shook her head. He held her right hand with his, touching the rings lightly, and held her waist with his left hand. Pulling her closer to him, until they were close enough to not not kiss. And so they did, and the world didn't exist anymore, as he pulled her even closer to him. There, beneath the dark blue sky with sparkling stars scattered all over it, standing over softly crashing ocean waves; with the world above and below them, they stood kissing.
Comments
Post a Comment