It was a chilly sunday afternoon and yet she could only think of a white skirt and a peach eye-let blouse as dressing options for their central park picnic that Maan had enticed Meera into going, which left her with no options but to join them. But her skirt wasn't such a bad idea at all, she thought to herself when it enabled her to run free around the grounds, playing Frisbee with a few kids she'd befriended after their lunch of cucumber mint sandwiches that Maan's Daadi had brought along. Well, there was her hair that kept flying up in the October air, a good sweat that had wet the back of her blouse or the constant fear of a gust of wind that might raise her flare skirt to her face and thereafter be cursed to live with that embarrassment for the rest of her life. However, all her worries didn't let her breaking into giggles when a blond cherub of a kid had tickled her into giving him away the Frisbee she'd caught leaping high up in the air, as if she'd turned into a doe just then.
"Geet...we are leaving to catch up with the performance by the softball field", Meera's shrill voice took her attention, "MK is sitting on that bench on your side. Can you ask him to come over too? He isn't picking up his phone..."
She nodded, but was left to wonder why he hadn't just sat with everyone else on the blanket that was spread under the shade of the tree. By the time, she spotted him occupying the only bench in a far corner, which was more an alcove by the grove of trees that surrounded it, she turned to find the others had already left from their spot.
"It seems like we are left behind. They have all left to see the drum performance...", she said reaching him, her breathing quickened from the short mound she'd had to climb to get there.
He looked up from the screen, still absorbed from whatever it was he was doing with his laptop and eventually smiled breaking out of the trance his work held for him. "Why didn't they call me?", he asked and before she could answer, he grabbed his phone said, "Got it...No battery"
She flexed her back, "I think they tried to wave to you...", she said and twisted around to check if they had a view of him, but soon realized that they couldn't have caught a glimpse of him until they'd walked well into the ground where she'd been running around with the kids...
And it was the same blip of a second that she paused in her thoughts when she'd seen him at the parking lot in a similar - or was it the same? - grey shirt she'd originally wanted to buy for him, but later was forced to talk him out of buying that shirt owing to its lofty pricing.
"Ready to go...", he said lugging his laptop bag over his shoulder and that bought her out her conjectures that was baseless at best.
When they began walking along the pathway to the fork that would take them to the performance arena, she couldn't hold her presumption about his shirt, in any longer.
"Is that the shirt we saw at the store yesterday?", she asked suffering with awkwardness.
"This?", his forehead furrowed at first and then laughed, perhaps from the understanding where she was getting at with her line of questioning, "No...but a similar one. I bought it two weeks ago..."
She was secretly grateful that he hadn't taken it as an offence from all that was possibly implied then.
"Oh!...", she sounded surprised, but really that was just relief; uncalled for to begin with, but relief all the same.
Albeit, something else began to bother her again, "But what if I had got you this same shirt yesterday?...You didn't even make a mention that you already owned one from that brand and design"
"I didn't think it was necessary..."
"And you would have owned two similar looking shirts then?", she said.
"Yes...but one would have been your gift...", he smiled at her briefly as they continued to make their way to the fork.
Indeed. His simple answer must have put all her doubts to rest; one was a gift, when the other wasn't and there were no underpinnings to it. But his words made her look away, far into the spread of the pond that was slowly collecting a puddle of fog around it. Funny, that nature would be a sprite and mirror what was inside our own hearts.
Just so she would have her mouth shut the rest of the time, she stopped an ice cream vendor and got herself a chocolate bar.
"Let me take care of it...", he said, before she reached for money tucked in her tiny cross-body purse.
"Thank you", she smiled up to him.
With only a quarter of her bar done, her only napkin that the vendor had given was stained with the cream dripping onto her fingers. Intermittently, she was forced to face away from him and secretly lick them off to keep the gooey stream from going further down her palms.
It was the last thing she expected at such a time when they were about to turn into the right fork, when a yelping Dalmation running towards her.
"Oh! god...", she let out a earsplitting cry, pirouetting about in tip-toes, "Maan...please...make it go away..."
At the rate the dog was jumping to place its fore legs into her lap, she felt light headed and thought better to grab onto something for support. Her hand fluttered from side to side as she continued to cry from her deep seated fear of dogs and before long, she found herself tugging at his shirt from behind him, using him as her shield from the pouncing dog.
Her eyes was scrunched tight, her arms tightly wound around him, and nearly in the verge of tears, her cheek rested below his shoulder when she finally came to feel his hand shake her back into realizing the surroundings they were in.
"Just open your eyes and look...the dog is gone...", his voice was firm, more so from number of times he'd repeated it to her, otherwise she could still sense his concern when he touched her hand that had squished the front of his shirt for a tight grip.
She let him go at once, mortified a hand flew to her mouth in that thickening confusion she felt inside her, "I'm sorry...", she said as her eyes misted.
"It's ok...", she heard him say, although her feet had picked up pace in that short reprieve and she turned away from him, taking off into the left fork.
Not until she saw an opening in the woods - shortly after the sudden run she'd broken into - did she stop by a tree and leaned against it to catch her breath. The unexpected showers from the morning still had the trunk wet and she put both her palms over it and let the cold from the bark as a compress against the anxiety that wouldn't subside then. She was numb throughout and there was a part of her mind that acted as if it had blacked out from the instant she'd sighted the dog.
Only when she was assured that she remembered nothing from those moments of alarm, she gave into taking in the breathtaking sight that nature was conjuring in-front of her. The water was still as the skies that it reflected, with no wind to toy with its surface and bring cause for a ripple. A fan of golden rays petered through the empty branches, a play of shadows danced around the pond, while a shower of yellowing maple blew into her view.
"Get over it...", she heard him speak from the other side of the tree.
She had expected him to follow her, but what perplexed her was the lack of painful delicateness in that moment, that she ought to have rightfully experienced with his presence. There was no telling what he was asking her 'to get over..' and so she started with the only convenient assumption there was.
"How?...I'm really scared of dogs...", she took a step toward the front of the tree while her body continued to brace the trunk as if she was stuck to it and peeked at him by tipping her head to one side.
He held her gaze until she felt compelled to shield them and shifted it back to the vista that began to glow from the light tricks that the clouds put into place.
"You face your fears...there are no shortcuts when it comes to that...", he said, folding his arms.
"I guess" she said, her voice low as she looked at him.
"Did you have a lot of dogs at home?", she asked unable to resist.
"Yes...", he seemed to re-think his response even as he spoke, "A long time ago. She would just bring in every stray she would lay eyes on and gave them the strangest names..."
A wistful look come over his face and unseeing he gazed at the view and smiled, as if he was reminded of those memories long suppressed.
She titled her head further down and blinked once, "But, daadiji doesn't seem to be like one who would have such interests. I meant...", she amended quickly when he shifted his eyes to her, his forehead furrowed, "she is just one regal woman, that's all...Its very difficult for me to imagine her picking up strays..."
"I believe she is...", he said without a counter and a slow smile crept up his lips.
She smiled in kind and for the longest time they didn't utter another word as they felt entranced by the changes that the fading light brought into being, as though it was a prelude to a dream. There was both gloom and beams of light that settled over the water as a brilliant lattice work of shadow art.
"What are we doing here, Maan?", the words left her mouth before she could think it over, but she didn't regret it as much when she noticed him stock still, with his hands still locked in place and observing something around where her fingers rested on the brown trunk.
Her brows drew together, as she added, "What do you think we would be doing had we not come here and had missed out on all this?"
"I...don't...", he drawled as he bent down to pick up a red leaf, "know...", he said as he took her fingers and placed the tip of the leaf where her array of silver bangles ended at her wrist. Her eyes flew to him and then back to the leaf, her fluster heightened while he would do nothing beyond that.
She was about to jerk her hand back, when a black ant surfaced above the last of the bangles and her brows shot up seeing the size of it. His hold being tight, he wouldn't let her shirk him and led the ant onto the leaf and later settled it safe in the ground away from the general direction of the trail.
A smile widened at her lips, as she lightly tapped her forehead, "It was an ant..."
"Yes", he said straightening, "And if we go that route of second guessing time...", she saw him run his thumb over his bag strap, his voice tinted with a latent anger, his eyes fixed on her with a measured intensity, before he turned to start on the path they'd taken to reach there, "Then we will just have to do that for every second ever since you landed in New York, don't you think?"
She hated when he spoke in puzzles and given how there was only one answer for this, she knew his question didn't warrant any.
By the time, she ambled from the soft ground to the trail road, he was further ahead, leaving her behind and the sight of his receding form around a bend set in a strange disquiet in her.
"Looks like its either I'm leading and you are falling behind...", he paused from hearing her shout and took a few steps back to face her and he waited with his arms placed akimbo.
She continued as she approached him, "Or you are too ahead of me and I'm left trailing after you...", her voice fell and her tone shifted every so slightly when she was only a few feet away from him, "I think, we should walk alongside each other..."
Right then, her eyes caught the chocolate stain her fingers had left on the left side of his shirt, right around his...her eyes flew to him, a trance like fixation came over her when her hand raised on its own accord, still holding her soiled napkin, to wipe it.
"Careful now...", he said and caught her wrist, "we wouldn't want to go around saying such things when they sound like full-blown promises..."
Her eyes were rooted on the chocolate smears on his shirt and from what was left of her senses, she registered him lowering her hand down while he shook his head, refusing her from cleaning the mark.
"Don't...it will get worse...", he said, his voice hoarse and to her it sounded more as advise than as words of caution.
Her gaze stayed on him and even then she could feel the warmth of his palm as the back of her hand slid out of his; the moment tender from an unprecedented stillness while something nascent spiraled along in its wake, as the last of her fingers left his...all but one and she couldn't help but utter what'd remained at her lips the entire time and she raced to that whisper, "May be it is...", before their fingers fell apart.
She shifted on her feet, an exhale and tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear as that one finger shook from a course of nervousness.
Finally, a cold wind came by with the sound of rustles in the air and she was aware with the same certitude as feeling the gale on her skin, his gaze had remained with her during that full second.
Like the reminder that she didn't need then, her phone rang, the words of the same song that had bewitched her all night dissolved into the quiet, jolting her into reaction.
Mehsoos kiya hai...and it went on and on for a beat more, until she could hear no more of it and took her phone out only to have it go mute from the call having ended just then. It was Meera.
"Then...we should get going...", he said and an invitation of a smile rose to his lips.
Soon, they fell in step and she raised her eyes back to him with a smile in place, now that the moment had passed.
Another few minutes passed as they walked in silence, before she found her words again.
"So there was this neighbor's dog, Bunty...", she started to tell all that she'd never voiced before...
Bade Achche Lagte Hain Naya Season
Book Talk
Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
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