She crackled with laughter as she went up in the air. Her long curly strands dancing with joy. Her lips curled to bring out her biggest smile. For him. The most beautiful smile.
Eyes shut. She felt her father’s soft push sending her 8 years old self, soaring on the red swing. Soaring. Her new word for the day. The red swing. Her favorite corner of the community park. She could see Jaya auntie’s balcony as she went high. Pigeons around the water bowl. She felt the chilly air fill her lungs. Burst of energy.
He saw her uninhibited and happy for the first time. Saw the bubbling bursting child. For the first time in a year of knowing her. He saw her forgetting the complicacies of the daily life. He would wait for her to get sated and come back to him. Will untangle her tousled hair. She would laugh at his obvious display of affection. But it won’t matter, because she would try to absorb every sensation, as his fingers move along her hair. What he calls the strands of crazy.

Weird!!!!

There were these strange moments..when out of nowhere like a bolt of lightning..no, actually it was never that harsh..like a flash of light..as if he was being enlightened..he would think of her. Not when he was with his friends discussing girls and football and stuff..things that boys talk about when they gang up (I can't help with this, not being a boy or having known boys so closely). Anyway, no..., that was not when he thought of her. He did not look at her ever in class or otherwise. He never had to...

Physics class..Sajid sir explaining something which I never understood..and in any case don't remember at the moment..that was a very unlikely day..It was late August...afternoon..it should have been hot..so that all of us would have a natural reason to be sleepy and lethargic. Surprisingly none of us were..we were all up though you couldn't call us upbeat....and the day wasn't hot...it was breezy..there was no sun...it was going to rain and we knew it...the soothing yellow light that suffused the school ground promised us that. Then all of a sudden he thought of her. Just like that. He didn't know that he had ever observed her lashes so closely. He was surprised that he remembered them so vividly. They were long and thick..Not as long or thick as Aeshita's though. He liked her. He wasn't sure but he thought Aeshita liked him back too. He was going to ask her out this Saturday...

Yes...it was the most unlikely day. Sajid sir let us off early, which was something that had never happened till then and never happened again. We had almost half an hour to kill before we went back home. Not that any of us wanted to...it was the last year of school. And in that year people get close like never otherwise..each moment becomes special. As the grown ups of the school we had certain powers that made life very sweet. At the same time there was this terrible...unarticulated sense of fear. None of us admitted it. We ween't even aware of it, I guess. But the sense of community that such a feeling created in us was strong...deep. Going away from school was like getting a taste of the world which we weren't sure we were ready to enter..and for my part I wasn't even sure it I wanted to enter...

He took this opportunity to talk to Aeshita. He was right. She did like him. And when ten minutes later he asked her out she said yes. The latest of the tens of couples that had sprouted on the first floor of the old wing of the school in the last two months. But somehow this didn't seem as unlikely as some of the others though...they were kinda like the jock and cheerleader couple in the teen movies...who seem perfect with each other...of course the cheerleader had to be bad and the jock would inevitably fall in love with the girl who had loved him all year and the goodness of whose heart wins her her love at the end after the jock realises how gorgeous she looks at the prom night...that does not happen here. Aeshita was not a friend. But she was not a bad person. And the story does not end like the movies...well, not exactly.

And what she, and I don't mean Aeshita here, doing? She was staring out of the window. She wrote poems. But she was not writing one at the moment. It was too soon..then she started talking to her friends. They always seemed to have a million things to discuss. My romantic heart wanted her eyes to flit in his direction once in a while...for them to betray a tinge of bitterness...But today was not the day for it. It was the most unlikely day.

He had a cousin sister. He loved the little thing more than any other in the world. She had the chubbiest of cheeks. And they reminded him of her. Not her cheeks. Just her. I wish I could say a little more about this. But I can't. Because there is nothing more to say.
It was very weird....I assure you.

The next summer all of us passed out of school. Aeshita and he were still a pair much to my annoyance. That was not how it was meant to be. But there was no helping it also for they were clearly in love with each other. It seemed like the only one whose heart was broken was mine...I had hoped for so much. It was just strange that things didn't work out the way I wanted them to. I was so sure that he liked her and she liked him in some deep mysterious way. They weren't like the best of friends or anything. They enjoyed each other. And yet they were never together. Theirs was a relationship that was so subtle that nobody knew of it....it lay so deep that it was hardly visible..

Or so I'd like to think!!!!

Purple

She swished the door open and entered, impertinently, placing her beautiful butt on bed the with laundered muave sheets. There was a slight depression on the mattress as she settled in her place. Her face, pink, either because of joy or a lot of exercise. Erm. I tried not looking at her and started shuffling my papers. I wouldn't be the one to give in now. I knew what she had been upto. She must have completed one of those beautiful paintings she was working on simultaneously. I have always wondered how she manages to delve into different realms at the same time. One second she is layering the sea waves, green, blue and gray and the next she paints her sky flaming red and you are convinced it is possible. She creates the earth. It all comes out of the stroke of her brush. This one time, she told me she wants to add puple to the mountains. I laughed. She didn't say a word and I continued working on my story. The characters were charting their own destiny. I couldn' t have left them for an implausible, unrealistic colour combination. Sheila was yearning for a child and Dhruv wanted to walk out of the marriage unsure of, perhaps, everything. As I brooded over the sheer incomprehensible subjectivity of my characters, I heard her shriek. I rushed out of the room. To comfort her out of her fear. I found her, standing in front of the canvas. She turned, looked into my eyes and smiled. She came close to me. Her pink, plush lips pouted to caress my cheek and as she moved away I noticed the purple, green and brown together, majestically on the mountains. The sunlight angled in a way that an absence of purple would have made the vision incomplete. I had stood there noticing the playfulness as she curled her hair around her finger. Today, she had been complaining about her aching belly since morning. I tried to make her lie down a bit but as she put it, she was bursting with an idea. If she didn't put it on canvas, it will haunt her and make her restless. Why does she need me in her life anyway? I give a part of her to each of my characters. And her paintings are nothing about me. She lives through them. Perhaps she thinks I have encaged her and thus she has to paint to reach out and envision the world outside. Fine. She can walk out on me anytime. I would pretend as if I don't care. As she moves towards my table I am sure she will tell me how she cannot take presence in her life anymore. How suffocated she feels. How she could be a lot more, without me to hold her back. She smiles. Her eyes light up, quite literally. I have never seen anyone's eyes shine in real life. Sheila has inherited her eyes. She bends down and tells me that she feels better now. Finally she has taken a crap.

...

I'd like to write
But my passions are not yet strong enough
Maybe I'm afraid
Scared that you'd be gone
Even before we began
I am happy here
I am away from all that
I am where I wanted to be
Excitement colours my way
To sleep at night is just too lame
When the cool wind blows your hair about
And dogs snuggle up close
When you chat away the hours with a new found friend
Everything is new
Everyday is a morning
A joy to wake up to...

I am scared