“Someone’s funeral, people talking to each other..making a lot of noise..I saw dad’s tensed face somewhere in the crowd…and not thinking about whose funeral it is, trying to make a big bubble with the chewing gum and cover my head inside it or if it doesn’t work to stick it on my head…Looked at two dogs making love..unintentionally staring at one of them till the male dog jumped at me barking..”
Woke up from the sleep, A Sunday. I walked to the corridor in half hallucination of the weird dream. It got dark very early, in that hot humid evening and there was nothing much to do, tiring afternoon nap. Felt like a veteran in the college hostel, failing to make through for years standing in the wide maroon floored corridor and in the depressing low voltage 40Watt lights which are on every door of the college hostel. They shouldn’t have put the lights on so early in the evening.
Thinking about nothing other than nothingness, looked down to the small ground where we used to play cricket, without any particular intentions. The ground looked empty in the setting sun, there were some stray dogs and the scattered bricks.. Lighted a cigarette..the newly found hobby. I looked nowhere trying to make smoke circles .. voids – one after the other… voids like the ones which she left behind.. A white Maruti esteem was slowly getting parked close to hostel building. It must have raised all dust around.. I continued trying to make circles…and before the engine stopped, one of the doors were open
It looked like someone who is in real hurry.
Heard someone running upstairs…
and I looked at the door, putting my cigarette down.
She stopped as soon as she saw me.
She was breathing so fast looking into my eyes and her eyes looked like she just stopped crying..
“rains made us closer, The rikshaw stopped in heavy rains, heaviest rain i ve seen and i never wanted it to stop, ..its he kind of stormy rain which used take the roof of the rubber smoke house at the old tharavadu house which always unsettles the last lantern where we all used to sit around, ammoomma, and an univited grandpa who lived in our house since the days I started remembering things.. we used to watch the heavy destructions it made all around our house and the arcanut trees which fell one across the other..
she sat in the irayam silently crying and never wanted to come to the small room next to the tv room in that big house of 26 rooms.. which had an uncomfortable wooden chair with nylon windings where usually the marathi servants at home used to get a glimpse of the remington steele, and the repeat telecast of last nights baywatch before they are shoved away by the grandpa.. I did telepathies to get her jus to sit with her.. but she liked irayam for no reason, which had a broken mirror and spoiled walls..looking at the big heaps of riped arcanuts”
she stood there in the college hostel varanda looking at me
She walked to me slowly and stood in front of me. I did not know what to think.
She put both her hands around me n cried, her heart was beating so fast until it reached into a bitter sweet symphony with mine.
We stood there for eternity holding each other
I saw the car engine getting started, never heard the sound of closing the door..
I knew she ran away through the streets full of dogs making love..
