ArHi OS: Infinite Epiphanies

She felt like an epiphany that came at the end of a guitar solo. She hummed along the song playing in the car radio under her breath. An old song, an obscure song and she knew the words for it. It didn't surprise him anymore - these little moments where her regular rambling self, retired and in its place a mellowed distant eyed girl morphed.

"When your driver takes me home, we reach in thirty minutes. When you do, it's an hour." She says, sliding her arms on the window frame and placing her chin on her arms. The bangs on her forehead flutter in cool night air and the bangles start leaving an impression on her cheek. The drive from his home to hers wasn't a short one and the heavy syrupy thing flowing between them made him take a longer and more scenic route.

The silence, lack of people looking at him and an isolated road in the inky black night finally releases some tension in his body. His knuckles aren't tightly around the steering wheel anymore. He smiles to himself when he sees her shifting closer to window and lolling her head outside the window like a dog. The road smells of old flowers, buried memories and fresh heartbreaks. He imperviously slows down the car to surround himself in the wet warmth of the night.

"I can get you home in twenty minutes," he says, challenge evident in his voice. He already knows she won't call him out on it, it's the competitiveness that seems to have made home right under his skin.

"I know. But I don't want to." She replies, simply.

That was Khushi in a nut shell. In her animated narration of a movie acted by her favorite star, she would string through words that punched him in the gut and squeezed his heart like an orange. She would flick her eyes at him then - just for a moment and then slide them back to Anjali or Lavanya or Naani or Payal, making him wonder if it was an accident or was she conversing with him.

As if there was an unspoken agreement between them, whatever they spoke or experienced on the drive to her home, they never addressed it outside those moments. It was private. It was a sub-reality they had cultivated between them to escape the constriction and rules of the real world they were already so weary about.

"Lavanya called this afternoon. She is doing fine." Arnav says, a touch of melancholy lacing his voice.

"She must have taken London office by storm." Khushi's voice is fond. During the abysmal engagement period between him and Lavanya, Lavanya had found a friend and confidante in Khushi.

"She will be a nightmare to those who slack." Arnav was proud of Lavanya.

Lavanya had politely bowed out of the relationship when she realized Arnav would never love her the way she wanted to be loved. They were too independent, too immersed in their own heads to be able to let go and simply be. Neither acknowledged that there was in fact one person who could be exactly that.

Khushi laugh was small. "She complained about half the staff and she is yet to meet the other half." Khushi added. "We spoke after her first day in office." She took delight in Lavanya's exploits.

Arnav wasn't surprised that Lavanya had chosen to call Khushi first and not him. He was an ex. Khushi was a friend.

"I wish there was a beach in this city." Khushi says, her fingers making invisible patterns on the air. "There is something tragic about walking on the beach in the dead of the night, don't you think so?" She asks, pulling her body in and turning fully towards him. Her voice hasn't raised a notch and is slightly above whisper. Few months ago Arnav would have sworn Khushi wasn't capable of speaking in a normal tone let lone whisper. Then again, he had gotten pretty much everything about Khushi wrong.

"Here I thought you would say it would be romantic." Arnav chides gently. Khushi chuckles and chucks her footwear under the seat. Bringing her legs close to her chest, she rests her chin on her right knee while she sits on her left leg. Her posture is incredibly domestic and oddly intimate.

Her eyes are bright and his are warm. They breathe in tandem as their hair flutter in the wind. The radio is silent and the car is dark. Both have their eyes fixed on different points on the road and that's okay between them. The presence of something sweet, tangible and cherished lingers between them. Neither acknowledges its presence. They don't ignore it either.

"I guess it can be romantic," she says after few minutes of driving in silence. "If you take away the eventuality of it then," She is looking out of the window again. "There is a morbid feeling to the ending of the night. It begins a new day, a fresh start, a clean slate, and things like that."

"What's wrong with that?" He is honestly surprised. This is yet another aspect of her he has never seen before.

She shrugs. "Nothing, I guess. They become a thing of the past. Like something that to be remembered in the future. It's like saying - Remember the time we walked on the beach at near midnight?' The thing is, we could be walking along the beach all through the night and in the first light of morning, the moment comes to an end though our time together hasn't."

Arnav chuckles at that. Khushi looks at him, surprised. "It's in the way us humans have adapted to the concept of time. Time is linear and is moving in one direction Khushi so it's an easy mechanism to follow, you know? If Time became relative, the world would be a confusing place to live in."

Khushi is staring at him, wide eyed. "What?" He asks, slightly defensive.

"Do you have to be always so...logical?" She grumbles. Now Arnav cannot help but let out the laughter that bubbles from his stomach.

He is still smiling when he enters the familiar road that's only few minutes away from her doorstep. Khushi scrambles to find her footwear that she had mercilessly chucked off earlier. He laughs under his breath when he hears Khushi's uninteresting curses.

He is surprised when she doesn't get down after he stops the car. Something twinges in his heart at her subtle rebellion against the world.

"Time could be fluid you know?" He blurts and immediately berates himself.

She lifts her head from her lap and peers through her eyelashes. He shrugs. "All these definitions are made for conveniences; night, day, past, present, future etc. A moment can be a fleeting glance or decades spent together. A moment can be a simple touch or a night spent together. A moment can be a long car ride and suspended conversations or clipped sentences and angry exchange of words." He stops when he sees her eyes shine.

She gives him a jerky nod and slides out.

"Khushi," he says. She waits for him to continue. "A moment is as long as we want it to be."

Khushi breaks into a smile and something unclenches in his stomach as he smiles back.

"Good night," she says and he waves back in response.

He waits till she is inside the house because he is a gentleman like that, he thinks. Once he is satisfied she is safe, he speeds into the inky darkness.

The moment hasn't ended yet.