Ek choti si love story (A small love story)

She’s late, again! He hates waiting, but then again, she is not just “anybody”. He calls her to ask how much longer she will be, and amongst profuse apologies (again!!), she asks for 5 more minutes. He relents, as he always does.

She is here, looking gorgeous, and his heart skips a beat. Come to think of it, almost all unattainable things have this amazing beauty. The smile is genuine and warm, starting at the corners of her mouth and ending with the sparkle in her eyes. He loves the way he can make her smile, carefree and honest.

Off to the coffee shop next, of course. Why do they always go to the same coffee shop every time, he wonders? Oh yeah, because she loves the coffee there. He orders for both of them (yeah, he knows what she wants) while she goes outside to choose the ‘perfect’ place to sit.

The coffee tastes great while he listens to her talk about how much work she has, how she isn’t feeling that well nowadays, how the doctors are asking her to undergo painful tests, how a cheap colleague keeps hitting on her, how her mom was asking about him coz they haven’t met for ages. The conversation is warm and comfortable, nothing pretentious … and so are the silences, thankfully. He realizes how comfortable he feels with her, even if there is no conversation …. something that never happens to him when he is with other people. She talks, he listens. He crack jokes, she laughs … a sound sweeter than any other. He likes to see her laugh, he tells her. She laughs less often nowadays, and that too mostly when she is with him, she tells him.

The laughter is interrupted by her ringing cell phone. He laughs at the “Malgudi Days” ringtone on her phone. He remembers the day he manually composed this tune on her nokia cell phone. She knows what he is thinking and smiles knowingly. It’s her husband. He can tell by the way the smile cracks and the force with which she presses the “cancel” button on her phone. Too late for defiance now, he thinks to himself. The pnone rings again, this time she takes the call. The conversation, if you can call it that, is short …. she has to go. She is cribbing about the various reasons why she has to leave, but he is not really listening. He is busy, trying really hard, not to let the dissappointment (or is that anger?) show on his face. He fails, and she knows. They still have 30 minutes together, the time it will it take him to drop her home.

He usually drives pretty fast, but today he is driving rather slowly. So slow that everyone is honking at him at the traffic light. But he doesn’t care, and neither does she. He needles her about an embarrassing moment from the past, you see, he loves to tease her. She pretends to hit him. He pretends to ward off the “blow”, and then, for a moment they go back in time. Arms entangled, faces flushed, their bodies in close proximity, lips almost touching. He feels a desperate need to kiss her. She wants to too, he can see it in her eyes, which are gazing into his. There in that cacophony of blaring horns and flickering lights, they find a moment of love.

They break away. He starts driving again. His heart beats hard and fast, almost painful, and there’s this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hates his sense of righteousness, why couldn’t he have kissed her? He so wanted to. There are a hundred reasons (and most of them right) that prevented him from kissing her … but that doesn’t quell the rising sense of ….. disappoinment? guilt? sadness? loss?

Before he knows it, they have arrived. She has to leave. No promises of when they can meet next, but he doesn’t expect any either. He smiles at her once again, not knowing when the next genuine moment of happiness will come his way.

Living on borrowed time may have made him cynical, but he hasn’t forgotten how to love.