"You are still in bed? Are you ok?"Chhavi loosely got up from the bed and stared blankly at the pale sky. Urmila was in her room, trying to find something.
"What are you searching for?"She asked, ignoring her question, with slight displeasure.
"My phone's charger...have you seen it ..."But her voice stopped abruptly in the middle of the sentence as Chhavi was again staring unmindfully at the calm, thick cloudy sky.
"Chhavi..."
She didn't turn back, rather her awkward cold tone ventured, "Sometimes we should listen to what our heart says...Papa often says this! Isn't it?" Urmila's apace movement of hands stopped for a bit.
"Do you really want a destitute life like your father?"she said, folding her hands her expression unchanged.
"Dreams does not make people destitute." she replied in the same voice, slightly turning back at her.
"People can't live with dreams."
"But people can live for dreams..."She said calmly.
"I don't want to argue with you. I don't understand why you are saying all this... What has happened to you?"She came where she was sitting facing the window. From the back, she was looking like a motionless statue, drowning in a dream. Urmila waited for a reply, but she didn't receive any response from her. She turned to leave, but at the doorstep she stopped,"Don't listen to your heart Chhavi. I had made a mistake long time ago, so I don't want you to do the same...love...dream...all are mere illusions..."And she left without waiting for her to answer.
The sky was awkwardly silent today, not a single leaf of the trees were moving; the calm before the storm. Wasn't she too fighting with a storm in her head? Rain & lightning, rocks & shadows... she felt all of these in her. Sitting on the bed, she pressed her fingertips against her eyes; a silhouette of a face peeped in front of her eyes, as if it was waiting for her to close her eyes. She tried shaking her head to get rid of it, but it wouldn't go away, only her cheeks got wet with salty water drops.
"Sir...sir"The voice came as a subtle overwhelming force in his reposeful mind. He gradually opened his eyes as it took some time to come back to the reality after a flow of dreams and looked at the boy, who was somehow a little surprised and curious to see him here at this time of the morning. Normally he came first and opened the factory.
"You were here all night...??"He said, his tone seemed a bit perplexed. Viraf looked at him and smiled,
"Yes...was trying to make a new fragrance...but something went missing...and I couldn't find the right component."He answered. Previous night was a difficult one for him. He didn't go home, couldn't complete his work, couldn't sleep at all, basically couldn't do anything but wait there sadly for something; something that he didn't even know, or maybe for someone...
"Sir...are you going to do a new experiment?"The boy asked while arranging the messy table.
"Kind of an experiment...if two new... different smells are mixed together...that would be good or bad?"He said in a mild tone as if he was asking himself for the answer.
"But I think I should wait some more...things are not in place." Unmindfully looking at the sky, he added.
"Sir...If you want to make an experiment...do it now...life is too short to wait..." The boy said in quite a dim tone. "By the way Sir, today you have a show...do you remember that?"
He nodded silently.
"Go and check! Have they arrived from the club or not?"The boy left.
After he left, Viraf came to the table to take his phone, but a small bottle which was placed there caught his eyes; again that restlessness started overpowering him. Whether he wanted or not but he was swept away to her. He put the bottle down and went to the window and looked outside. The clouds of the sky were thick as before, there were not any wind to speak of. The whole thing was looking as still as the painted background scenery in a film, waiting for a storm to happen. Is he in love with her? Or is it an attraction which he felt from the very first day? But it's also true that there was someone in her life...Then why did she always look at him so intently? And why did his heart always think that she is the only one...she is the one! He didn't know anymore, the boundary line of what is right and what is wrong had started to waver and he couldn't focus. He closed his eyes and tried to find some center inside to hold on to. But the truth was, whenever he saw her face, he saw her, that moment had become utterly precious!!
His programme had ended successfully, though he couldn't concentrate today. His show was a bit mechanical, as his eyes were finding some missing part of him. His club members had gone, but he was still there, last minute discussion went on between him and his associate regarding money. The university corridor was packed and noisy. A bunch of students were there too, gossiping and chatting, when his eyes stuck with her, Chhavi. And his heart felt a translucent sense of serenity. She was talking with a man. Her white patiala sleeveless salwar reminded him of a long lost dream, while her multi-colored dupatta was a metaphor for this reality. Sprinkling colors over this gloomy day. He gazed at her with bated breath. The man with whom she was talking, she herself and he - formed a still triangle in that obscure background. The triangle was fixed, unwavering.
"Chhavi,"he heard himself, saying her name, he hadn't planned on speaking her name but it came naturally. In a small voice, but she heard it and one side of the triangle collapsed as she looked in his direction and she felt like suddenly she had swollen a whole rain cloud. Viraf gradually came towards her.
"I didn't see you at the show! Where were you?"
Chhavi gulped down a bit of her bewilderment,"No...actually I came here to take some papers...I'm doing Ph.D so...you know...guidance and all."She smiled. Viraf nodded thoughtfully.
"How was your show?"She said after a while.
"Good...it was good!"He replied back.
"Are you going back?"He asked after a long pause.
"Yeah..."she smiled gently,
"May I join you?"
She nodded.
They started walking; the rain had come to a halt, but the wind was blowing in a mild tone. The atmosphere was covered with the smell of rain-soaked earth. Chhavi was silent.
"You always wanted to do this P.H.D?"He asked.
"Hmm...I always do what I feel..." she replied quite spontaneously.
"And this marriage too...you are doing deliberately?" Her steps stopped, she looked at him and at the next moment moved her gaze aside. He saw her eyelids were trembling faintly. Like someone rising to the surface of the sea from the depths below, she took a deep breathe and searched for the words to say, but they lay beyond her grasp. He reached out and touched her soft cheeks, though he didn't wish to do that but he couldn't help himself.
She looked up, surprised, then after a moment's hesitation she said,"Sometimes we have to chose the truth, the fact, whether we like it or not, we have to come back to the reality..."
"And why did you have to do that?"He asked.
She didn't answer.
"True or false, what's important is to love yourself..."
Suddenly the rain started with a heavy wind. The smell of the wet soil poured through the air. The pedestrians started running for shelter; the atmosphere was blurry as well as the thoughts which were stroking constantly like a drum in her head. She couldn't look at his eyes because she knew that if that happened, she couldn't control herself from sinking, but she clearly realized that his eyes were fixed upon her. A weird silence between them was predominating the rain-soaked wet wind except the constant jingling of rainfall, but still nobody felt any urge to utter anything; as if the moments somehow sealed there and the time soundlessly piled up at the dark bottom of the volcanic lake.
"Why are you avoiding your feelings? You are the one who truly knows what your heart wants..."His voice was intense, truthful, there was something which compelled her to look at him. She was drowning in an inevitable attraction; like the way the moth is always attracted towards the flame and his life is doomed with a burning desire. Silently, she looked at him. His deep and sensuous eyes, from where a sense of love was oozing out; a dark and deep love.
"What my heart wants is so profound that I don't think the world is mature enough to understand..."She said sluggishly. Her voice sounded weak, unsure where they were heading.
"And so you decided to suppress them?"How the hell did he do that? How come he knew about her suppressed feelings? Is he a mind-reader or something else?
"There aren't answers to all the questions..."She gathered some courage finally to say something, though her voice was still sounding hollow.
"Yes, there are."His confident gaze didn't leave her for a second.
"Really, then tell me why you are looking at me?"
He cupped her face, giving her a tingling sensation which ran through her veins tearing all mortal senses.
"...because I can't look away..."
"Why?"She sensed that her voice was trembling.
"I love you Chhavi."
Her heart skipped several beats, she was sucked into a time warp. Again an empyreal silence, the silence pierced her heart. She was trying to put into words something which she hadn't been able to say for a long time.
Her heart wanted to exclaim that,"Yes, I want you, only you, the abyss which I have nurtured and hidden for a long time can only be filled with love by you..."But her words remained unspoken and those unexpressed words grabbed a hold of her, and inside that hollow, her heart pounded with a vacant, vague rhythm and her words were sucked into that dull metallic void and before she could understand anything, she found herself wrapped in his arms and she felt her fallen world is actually falling in place, perfectly. A never ending void of nothingness was filling with rain-water. The earth slowly kept on turning. She took some time and gradually felt a warmth inside her heart as the bridge between the dream and reality had broken up and what was happening was a truthful reality. And all she wanted was to shroud this moment in the hollow of time. She buried her face in his hard chest as the broken world became alive, close, warm at once. Everything was complete.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FNMc0j1qM0
TO BE CONTINUED...
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