5. Scars
Let's connect the scars the tragedies of our past has left on us
and make a masterpiece.
*****
He is good in noticing things. He reads more than needed when it
comes to Khushi. Sometimes his observation beats the pattern by a
long shot but this is one of the times when he believes he is spot
on. The heat behind her argument is stale by a week and the energy
behind the vitality is more of a hum than steady strum of beat.
He catches her alone in a bus-stop nearby. Trickling darkness has
trickled away patrons from the place and her loneliness surrounds her
like a bright aura.
He knows what's going on with her because he is going through the
same thing as her. It was ironic how in tragedy they were equals
while he mocked their inequality in each aspect of their lives.
Death, has a way of peeling the layers we build upon and leave us
bare and vulnerable to the wind and rain and...people. It shows what
we are it also shows what other people are.
She doesn't even register his
presence with her stare fixed on the clasped fingers on her lap.
Buses come and go, patrons get in and get off but the two don't move
from where they are sitting. The silence between them is new and
unexplored but it has a voice of its own.
"I had a friend in school who said he held his mother's hand
when she died. Death came to her slowly, in the form of terminal
cancer and with each passing day he felt his mother's grip loosen and
slack. The transition moment from life to death was like leaving a
whoosh of air after swimming under the ocean for so long. He says its
the worst way to watch a person die." He says softly.
Khushi takes a moment to respond. "Death is death. There isn't a
good or a bad way to it, you know?" He nods. He knows.
"Does it make me a bad person for not remembering their faces
from memory anymore? I mean...I had three years with them, you know?
I have been taken care of and looked after like a daughter to my
parents yet...yet there is this...inexplicable ache in my gut, an
empty space in my heart which refuses to go away. Everyone says it
gets better with time, you know?" Her fingers shake violently with
her repressing the sobs that intend to break out of her skin.
"It doesn't get better. It doesn't get worse either. It
just...stays, you know?" He shares his point of view, freely. His
sister encountered same loss as him and back then he allowed her to
grieve the way she wanted to. He had to be the strong one, the one
who held his teenage sister in his eleven year old arms and rocked
her till she fell asleep.
"I don't want this pain to go away. I...I feel if I let go of
this pain, I will have nothing of my parents to hold on to." He
understands this too.
He never understood her before. She was always judgmental about
him.
In their misery, they discover each other.
"Why are you here?" She asks after an hour of silence.
He shrugs. "I want to be here. With you. Today."
She doesn't question his overly punctuated response.
She doesn't question when he slips his hand to hers and squeezes
gently.
She doesn't question when he ushers her to his car and they drive
around for few hours before dropping her home.
She doesn't question the way his fingers linger on her arm when
she has a step out of his car.
She takes in his soft smile and tired eyes without question.
Sometimes, talking is overrated, she thinks.
comment:
p_commentcount