“And with every day that passes, I am nearing the moment when I’ll become extinct”, he sighed, melancholy lacing the usual languid tone.
“Brer Rabbit had a good thing going for him out there, you know!” she spoke at the same time.
“What a funny thing to say! “, each thought.
*****************
He was born on a Saturday.
She was born in May.
He liked blue.
She loved green.
And they both had bought a lot of rose peppermints when they were kids.
******************
It was a sunny afternoon. And it was a chilly day. And it was the perfect time to spread the family quilt on the fresh green grass outside. The custom had translated into a need and the quilt with its one side a mosaic of embroidered stories and the other a dirty translation of grey green strains had a been a constant companion.
They always used to make sure that they dried out the quilt thoroughly before keeping it back in the cupboard. They made sure that the fresh new green and brown smudges on the underside were dry to touch and that not even the faintest smell of grass lingered.
But they never thought about washing them away.
They were always there. And only a gentle flip could have easily hidden the pretty gold embroidered suns and the pink and blue flowers and the autumn leaves -pale yellow and burnished orange. A gentle flip and you have those ugly grey green monstrosities peering back at you.
And they never wanted to wash them away.
And they both knew what these preserved metaphors stood for.
************************
She decided to paint Alice on her wall. But to her dismay she realized that she could paint Alice only in words. For you see, for all her creativity she was awfully bad with paints. The brush would always make a line or a smudge or mix colors she didn’t want and in all the wrong places. And being a perfect little perfectionist this gross imperfection, however minute would continue to rankle her till she’d destroy her own piece of art. “She was bad with paints but good with colors”, she thought and gave an ironical smile.
So with a bold brush dipped in the dark forest green she wrote “
and she had never forgotten that if you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’, it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.”
He came back in the evening and chuckled at what she had written.
“Of all the lines she chose this one”, he thought, and gave a half chuckle. “She won’t change. Not so easily”.
Picking up the book she had carelessly kept on the arm of the rocking chair, he flipped the pages till he found what would be the perfect answer for this riddle she had left for him.
Dipping his brush in the small squat bottle of the turpentine she kept, and then lifting it high above the mud colored liquid, he watched the drops of green fall off the dark brown curve of the brush hair, melting away from the solid glob of solidified paint like tears fading the agony of the intense green.
‘Green- the color of envy. Of jealousy!’
‘Of suspicion?’
‘He had to tell her. He ought to tell her’.
Not waiting for the paint to dissolve and with a few fast furious strokes of the brush in the turpentine he dipped the brush in the rich metallic teal.
‘Yes. Teal is the color’, he thought.
‘She will know why I chose teal’.
And laughing sardonically he wrote back on the wall.
‘
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘
I don’t much care where-‘said Alice.
‘
Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘-
so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘
Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘
if you only walk long enough.’
And with a casual flick of the wrist he threw the brush to where she kept her palette.
**************************
It was tea-time and a fine one at that, for the neighbors were visiting today, prepared to unload the usual neighborly gossip about other neighbors busy gossiping about these neighbors who were ready with all the answers and justifications for their gossiping about those neighbors and so on and so forth.
She had to entertain them even though she hated their guts, for she was often lonely and these communal gossip wells did provide her with an excellent façade of being well connected and being very much “in the circle” or as they said it, “to be in the thick of things”, even though she often used to wonder how could she, a mere listener, be in the thick of things being done by some Mrs. Unknown Personality having a well groomed and a very recognizable and rememberable face, living down the lane, in a patchy house, with four or five intolerable children and washing lines always bent under the load of what seemed to be hundreds and thousands of yellow white pants and floral shirts.
And then there would be a surge of pride in her as she felt glad of her taste in decoration and in her small, cozy, pretty house with just the perfect garden and an almost perfect bedroom, a neat, warm and tidy kitchen. ” Money can buy a lot. But you must have a good taste too”, she often said to herself.
And with a wicked (or so she thought) chuckle she was glad of generosities of fate in both these departments.
And yes. She thought herself to be quite modest too.
The semblance of reality and her struggle to keep the jigsaw pieces of her life from falling. With her one hand on one piece and the other one on another as it began to fall. The first furiously reaching to keep the third in place while the second hand immediately flew to the very first piece, too late, and now tracing its fall as it fell on to the floor. A mad tandav of moving hands and falling pieces. And with a click of the remote in his mind he would slow it all down and watch her movements , the despair in her eyes, the fluidity of her hands, her white shapely beautiful arms and her long slender fingers- a perfect analogy for her slippery dreamy insane tongue weaving mad webs around herself and everything that touched her life. And he would watch at leisure with that time slowing remote of his, a tear sliding down the curve of her high cheek bones as those rosy “quotes” emoted a smile, sometimes genuine, sometimes false.
Her eyes sparkled in joy and in pain. Tears were a culprit for the latter but then she looked pretty with her sparkling eyes.
And often when he was tired of simplifying her life for her, he would just sit back and get lost in the teary sparkling beauty of his inamorata. And in those precious few minutes he was indifferent to her pain, conscious of his delight in her beauty but for a moment cut off from his beloved with a knife of pure silver. And he delighted in his selfishness. But only for a few moments. Delighted in the solitude of this heart numbing indifference.
“My lovely fickle temptress”, he’d call her.
And the neighbors were coming.
And she had to shine her silverware, buff those mirrors, light scented candles, put a natural rosy creamy blush on her cheekbones, a pink gloss on her lips, pummel the cushions and not to forget, to smile at him to show him that she was enjoying herself to the hilt.
She was often tired of his “what’s the point of it?” lectures. They never ceased and she always had to listen and “respond”.
“His lovely fickle temptress out to tempt the world and herself into believing that she was all that anyone could want and desire”, she’d think to herself.
Ding Dong.
“Finally.”, she said breaking into a smile.
***************************
They both had two cupboards each. And of late, he was constantly waging a losing battle against the entry of her clothes into his manly domain. She left his wooden cupboard alone but the steel one had gradually started having more of her clothes than his.
“But, all this empty space”, she’d gesticulate with her arms, her eyes round in amazement, her eyebrows raised into exasperated Vs. And even after putting her evening dresses on the bed the tenth time, he knew she’d sneak them back in his cupboard as soon as he’d leave in the morning.
“A spoilt brat”, he’d think and then his frown would change into a smile as he would remember how gorgeous and breath taking she looked in that red flouncy crepe and chiffon he’d just put on the bed. And the vixen look of hers when she’d put on that deep wine colored fur of hers. He could swear that it could change colors. Sometimes a rich luxuriant black and sometimes a mouthful of the deepest richest royal purple spewed on the azure tinted black.
“She was classy alright”, he’d chuckle.
“And how he loved her.”
******************************
And for them SMS aka ‘short messaging service’ was a misnomer. Their messages to each other were never short. And the words seldom abbreviated. A single message meant three four messaging units full to the last permissible character. They blamed it on free messages. But they both loved those long long messages written in the wink of an eye with the ever so helpful “dictionary on” feature.
And they loved writing down these messages. She in her maroon diary decorated with Indian motifs and he in a solid black one.
And these message entries would often look akin to short plays with its two characters sparring and romancing, rhyming and timing, dueling about love, for love.
And in the same format as all the plays are written were two characters finding new depths to things they thought they knew about, named ‘princess’ and ‘zephyr’ in one and ‘me’ and ‘him’ in the other.
And funnily, despite all her romanticism and all his realism she could never label what he sent under fancy names and he could never help but fictionalize the main leads.
************************************
He was five hundred kilometers away from her. He’ll come back on Monday morning she knew. It was Saturday morning. And after many a coin flips. Best of three. Best of five. Best of seven. And every time the lion’s head would come. Never the number. Was she meant to go? She sure wanted to.
And then it was Saturday afternoon. A chilly December afternoon. The golden orb shining for all its worth failed to warm the biting breeze which blew. A cold shudder ran through her spine.
Bags were packed. Ticket bought. And a seat taken in the rickety bus. The first one that would go.
A rickety bus that shuddered and jolted with every rut in the road, with its glass panes vibrating, a slow rumble now and almost clanking against the grill now. She rested her back on the grey seat with its cover torn in places. A soft yellow foam poking out. The patches looked as if bitten by a child’s mouth and the foam pulled out by prying fingers, goading the seat into sharing its innards and not to mention its secrets. Did children actually bite and toothed upon these seats. Highly unlikely. But somehow she couldn’t get the image out of her mind. Was the gentle curve on the periphery of the patch the tell tale sign of a vicious young tooth. “STOP”, she screamed to herself. No decent parent would allow his kids to munch on public property.
“But what if the parent was asleep?”
“I said, STOP IT”, she shouted in her mind again.
She knew he’d make a great dad. Flying kites. Bicycles. Soccer games.
“And what if my own child is one of these seat munchers. My child would never do it if he is with me because I know that I’ll be carefully watching over him, making sure he doesn’t pick his nose, doesn’t smear his jacket with jelly and doesn’t run in the aisle disturbing people. But what if when he is with him and he falls asleep and my child begins to munch on these seats?”
“I must warn him against all these possibilities before he sets out alone with our child.”
“He’ll think I’m crazy and he will roll his eyes but our child could seriously get ill if he even licks these god forsaken seats”
“If I really insist, I know he’ll take care of this.”
“But what if my son bites and goads the seats in his school bus. Who’ll stop him then?”
“SHUT UP!!” she screamed to herself again.
“You don’t have a child now!!”
“Thank God. Nasty brat. Would never listen to me as it is if he is as headstrong as I could be. I am glad I am not a mother”
“Really?” escaped from somewhere deep within surprising even herself. Or maybe she just feigned surprise.
He had said, “We’ll see!!”
And the only reason she was going on this impractical and irrational trip was because the afternoon chill was a cold reminder of the warmth of his arms. The warmth of his arms as he enveloped her into a hug from the behind and she rested with her head against his broad chest, sinking into deep contentment as the warmth seeped into her through his arms, his warm cheeks and bristly chin.
And she could feel his huge invisible shoulders behind her even now. Could feel his warm breath on the nape of her neck as he’d nuzzle her.
Her body jerked as the bus rough necked it with another pothole on the road, successfully shaking her out of her reverie, leaving only the tiny cold blasts of wind in its wake. Tiny cold blasts of wind creeping in through mal-aligned windows and cacophonous doors.
“Well, at least my daughter won’t ever munch and crunch ugly stained seat covers”, she sighed with relief.
She turned her face towards the windows and the sun on that side of the road filled her closed eyes with an overwhelming hazy pale gold warmth.
“How she loved him”, she reveled.
**********************************
