One song, one evening

She sat down by a small tree shade. From one of the street shops, a slow instrumental music sneaked out of the radio to come rest by her side. As she slowly let her eyes close and open again to the gentle tune, she saw across the street, him – standing with one leg resting on a shattered wall, thick with old movie posters pasted one on top of another. He was looking at her as if she was a picture from an old memory that soothed him on evenings as these, when the sun took back from earth all its ultravioletness and simply stayed back late to watch her people. She looked back, something about the way the music floating across her hears and his eyes resting on hers, telling her there was no need to look away. Not searching for any meaning, she let her eyes smile.

 

He moved his eyes now to look at her hair and raised his brows. She inspected her curly tufts to find a dry brown leaf clinging on a lose strand. She let it fall and in turn looked at his shoe laces come lose. He followed her gaze and bent down to tie it. Tit for tat. Before they could come back to play their gaze-game, a fast dog running down the street made her stand up agile. As she heaved at its retreat, he let her see him laugh gently. She looked down to hide her blushes. When she lifted her face up, his eyes asked her to look yonder at the skies above. Tiny dots of birds circled a far away hill as the sun was preparing to start its journey down the horizon. The music, now led by a violin seemed to have brought him along to her side. She didn’t know how long they stood there watching the beautiful evening slid into oblivion or when they started walking uphill to personally bid goodbye to a magical day. The radio was now far away, but the music never left her side – it stood between him and her, letting her dream on and not fall back to reality.

From the windows of a train

05:50 – Wish the sky stayed the same dark shade of blue all day… when trees are black and jasmines gray. No green, no red. Only the colors of peaceful slumber

06:20 – Like everything else in the world, the sky’s turned a different shade in a few minutes. Much lighter. New colors are born everywhere. Man dares to catch the first drop of sunlight in his eyes. And as I look on, I fall in love with the lightness of the sky I vowed to hate before.

07:00 – You can’t take your eyes off for a moment, the blue has grown into a shy little shade, blooming bright in its youthful splendor. Black birds loom up the sky like bees to honey. They must wonder when they’d ever touch her.

07:20 – In bits and pieces, white clouds spread their wings across, like the first drops of corruption marring her youthful innocence. I gaze down to see some of that white, like tiny snow flakes, on little buds scattered outside every house in the village you pass by. It’s the same white flower I saw everyday as a child and never bothered to smell, all that smell now rushed their way through the past to come rest on my nostrils. It is the smell of childhood… a smell I’d rather leave behind for time to kill.

08:00 – The clarity of it all scares me. If only, I could let such clarity enter my mind and chuck out everything that blurred it. But now the tiny ponds and streams carry fading reflections of the dark tree tops. I wish the darkness stayed longer. Maybe, clarity was just not my thing.

09:00 – I let my head droop down a tad too long to realize the first tan of the day is now waiting at my window sills ready to come in and soak me in its bloody heat. The day as I knew it has begun. The scorching sun and the merciless burns it carelessly dropped everywhere… Squinting a bit and letting my palms fight the rays awhile, I give up like everyday, letting the day take over. Maybe, just once, I could win the battle and let the night stay over for a day.