by Prashila Naik
Every Sunday evening, they meet in the chaotically-setup- yet-strangely-relaxing cafe on 31st Main, 2ndCross. She prefers the table near the window, and he prefers the less conspicuous one in the corner. But it is a preference that he cannot justify, and so every time, he lets her have her way. Another reason he does not mind the table is that he is intrigued by how she manages to make life outside that window an integral part of their conversations, and the basis on which she picks up props from among the men, women, children, cars, dogs, and numerous other entities in that vast sea of beings that passes only peripherally around them. On this particular day though, he is finding himself increasingly disinterested in the woman she is talking about, a woman he has heard of before, but already forgotten. What he is really interested in is the blue kajal lining her upper eyelashes. He is unable to take his eyes off it, and as he appraises its utterly comfortable strangeness, he notices other things. She has a scar running almost parallel to her right eyebrow. Her lower lip is much more fuller than the upper one. A lone strand of her hair extends itself onto her cheekbone, before disappearing behind her ear.
“You won’t believe the amount of perfume she sprays on herself,” she is saying now. “The whole washroom smells of her. Almost every alternate day, someone or other complains of migraine because of that strong smell. It’s annoying, right?”
He nods, registering only the ‘right’ at the end of her sentence, for his attention is now focused on the rest of her face. Not the prettiest of faces he has seen, but definitely the most expressive, honest too. He is amazed at how he has never paid any attention to these finer details that in a way define her, even though their friendship goes a long way back. Only now does he notice how her eyes aimlessly flicker as she ends every sentence, and how one of her front teeth is longer than the others. For no palpable reason, he finds this arrangement of her teeth extremely attractive.
“When I was a child, I thought the more you smell of perfume, the better it is. A woman who left a trail of ‘nice’ smell behind her, every place she went, was all I had aspired to be then,” she says and laughs, half-covering her mouth.
“Why do you do that when you laugh?” he asks, registering that gesture as if for the first time, even though he would be able to easily recreate its image inside his head if asked to.
“Do what?”
“Close your mouth when you laugh.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never gave it a thought.”
“What if you had to give it a thought?”
“Well then, maybe it is an impulse, or maybe my mother taught me to do it when I was a child, like so many other things I do without fully realising them, you know, like touching someone’s arm and apologising when I happen to kick them. Why are you asking?”
“I don’t know, just asked.”
She nods and begins to start sipping from her mug. He knows she likes to drink her beverages in a single sitting, and that she also likes them at a temperature that in her own words is a ‘midpoint between warm and lukewarm’. He watches how she doesn’t hold the mug with its handle, instead wrapping all her fingers around its body such that the handle thrusts itself out. He tries holding his own mug in that manner, but gives up.
“I like the blue colored kajal you are wearing,” he says and puts the mug down.
She puts her mug down too, clearly surprised.
“You do? I did not think so, especially with the way in which you have been staring at it all day long.”
“No, of course not. I think it looks lovely, and what makes you think that I can stare at something only if I don’t like it? In fact, what kind of reasoning would that be? Why would I stare at something I don’t like?”
“How would I know? You were the one staring, and that too as if I had horns on my head.”
“And did that bother you?”
“Did what bother me?”
“The staring?”
“No. No.”
She smiles in a strange manner. It takes him a while to realise that she is blushing.
“Do you know some people can sense it even when someone is staring at their backs? It must be weird to have such sensitivity, though I could have done with something like this when I was a child. It would be so good to sense my mother’s eyes on my back every time she happened to catch me eating ice cubes from the deep freezer. Oh! How I miss those days. I would so go back to that time.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d get bored after a while and long for this freedom, this ability to choose, and buy, and eat what you want to. I think every time we say we want to go back to some relic of our past, we are only trying to refuse to accept our inability to deal with growing up. It’s an easy refuge, an escape. Oh! How I wish I could be a child again. Simply say it, and pass the blame onto time and age, factors that you anyway have no control on.”
“But who says refuge is a bad thing? To me the possibility of escape in itself is a manifestation of hope…”
He can see she has misunderstood the point he was trying to make, and on any another day, this realizstion would have catalysed another one of their passionately drawn out, though inconclusive debates, but today, he has no such intentions. He doesn’t want her to stop talking, even though he isn’t particularly attuned to most of what she is saying. His eyes are set on her face on which he can see clear reflections of the patterns of her entire speech, her lips pursing in surprising coordination with her eyes, relaxing and pursing again setting a rhythm of their own . Her fingers spring to life too, constricting and expanding into more patterns. He thinks he has never seen a sight more fascinating than this, her face, her arms, her voice, her whole being aglow with just the force of genuine self-awareness. He feels a tenderness rise inside him, and he wishes she would go on talking like this, just for him, just for herself.
But, her arms drop down on the table in a sudden movement, and she stops talking to look down at one of them.
“Oh God, I completely forgot. I have a dentist appointment. I’ll need to leave now.”
She slips her cell phone inside her tote bag, and stands up.
“Sorry I completely forgot to tell you in the morning,” she says, when she stops by his chair. He opens his mouth to respond but stops, when he feels her fingers on his shoulder. It isn’t the first time she has done that, but he registers that gesture now in its full intimacy. He turns his head slightly to look at her fingers, noticing how she has painted the nail on her index finger in a shade of red that is darker from the one that the rest are painted in.
He sees her wave from the other side of the window, that familiar smile on her face. He waves back, and watches her disappear, one stride at a time. He thinks of the blue kajal on her eyes, he thinks of her sitting down on the dentist’s seat, opening her mouth wide, and clenching her fists tight, besieged with a fright that she will never acknowledge to anyone. He thinks of the nail paint, he thinks of why he is still thinking of her, and why he did not want her to leave. He has no clear answer, but he knows he will have it soon. He picks up his coffee mug, and wraps his fingers around it, struggling once, twice, but getting it right the third time.
Prashila Naik dreams of retiring into the idyllic landscapes of Ladakh and longs for a day when every child in India will have two full meals to eat and a permanent school to attend to. When not dreaming or longing, she continues to extend her repertoire as a veteran IT professional who loves to dabble with words and discover new genres of music.
Pic : http://www.flickr.com/photos/haileyartjourney/
Great writing, Prashila 🙂 Loved it!