Silhouette of an evening

The august evening and its consummate beauty sweeps over her, like a woolen blanket wrapped around on a december night in Delhi does. She snatches greedily, parts of it, for keeps; the way a writer attempts to snatch words from interesting conversations with a hurried frenzy, trying to retain all of it in his head.

She sits legs stretched out, her feet buried deep inside the moist sand at Dadar sea face. ofcourse, this place wouldn’t find a mention in any tourist places of interest or for that matter the locals. But for her it is the haven she is married to. The sea has been intently witnessing her life, like a lover who curiously consumes and relishes the idiosyncratic trivialities of the partner’s life, night after night.

It is in the sea’s soul she repeatedly finds a calming air of permanence. She is here today, to bid adieu. She has imagined this moment many times, creating a visual image of the elaborate farewell she would bid to Mumbai, visiting every place that is close to her heart.Kolkatta isn't really a city she looked forward to making home, but with age she seems to embrace change the way the sky does to different formless patterns every evening.

She is here to share this evening with S. She has known him for a month now. Not long enough to remark, ‘Isn’t this evening similar to that one we shared 4years back at marine drive, weren’t we so juvenile then? Ah, how much life changes.” Suckers for nostalgia, aren’t we. But then again, as the cliché goes, it seems like she has known him for a lifetime. When she first met him in a noisy coffee place, she didn’t particularly realize that someday she would drown herself in the sparkling smile and charming dimple that that adorns his sharp long jaw line. She didn’t imagine that she would slowly, with time, lend all of her possible love and yen to him.

Now as he walks towards her, with a smile so familiarly endearing she could do nothing but notice how heart breaking her love for him was. She gets up involuntarily and hugs him tight, ignoring the detestable glare of the world around that indulges their voyeuristic curiosity. Later they sit next to each other, treating themselves to a silent and glorious sunset. He takes her palm in his, and strokes the palm lines, as if he wants to change some lines of fate with each stroke.

She volunteers to speak, breaking the mellow silence that lies between them. She remarks that he looks like a 70’s rock star. He smirks joyously, hoping she likes that look. Curly unruly hair, funny spectacles over the chiseled nose, bright red shirt, and the lean body structure; how would it feel to embrace these, she wonders. How would it be to touch, taste, smell and experience a togetherness that will give their relationship a place it deserves?

He has not spoken of love yet. He didn’t have to. He didn’t want to.

She does. Love has its ways, she tells him. Unique ones. Love takes different forms and shapes. It comes from places you don’t expect it to, and refuses to be what you want it to be. It is as permanent as the promise of a passing cloud. And as transient as the howl of an infant. It flees from the definitions you want to box it in. It becomes a violent hurricane and then a tranquil desert night. It grows beyond illiberal ideas of age and time, parochial definitions of morality, hackneyed and categorical descriptions of companionship that society attempts to impose on us.

He seems to understand. He seems to want to appreciate. Yet he argues. He refuses to appreciate love of a sort that transcends convention. She hopes that he would offer an amicable nod. A willingness to ponder over these. A desire to travel the distance from his ideas to hers. She likes to believe that he has an appetite to evolve and understand how she sees love, in its purest simplest form. But for now, he refuses to give in.

They getup, dust their clothes off the sand and walk along the borders the waves have left behind. They laugh heartily and animatedly, at jokes they wouldn’t remember when they try to reminiscence at a later time. They make silly conversations that intelligently masquerades the intensity of what they feel for each other. Expressions of love in words seem too futile for both of them.

It is then that he turns to her side, and she knows it is time. Time to give a new color to their intimacy. With a natural and obvious knowing smile she moves closer to him, pulls him closer by clinging on to the red shirt, and caresses the border of his jaw line drawing lines that extend from the corner of his eyes to that of his lips. And once close enough to be able to hear his heart beat, she moves forward in a clumsy hurry and kisses. He kisses back with a cautious ferocity. Their lips, soft, hungry and anxious glide over each other. Their tongues indulge each other, the palms clasp together and their bodies reach close enough for them to feel what their closeness does to each other.

They say things about how time stands still. In this case it didn’t. It was running like a borivilli fast. All evening they kept stealing time from time, to kiss, to touch and to taste. Like teenagers that have stumbled upon the joys of the racing pulse for the first time, they gush, blush and revel. They get home, to the comfortable privacy of a bed and delight in the abundance of bodies that deeply desire each other.

She would look back at this evening and see how at one time they were little children, pulling each other’s hair, playing ‘shop shop’. At another, they were messy insecure teenagers catching a glance when the other wasn’t looking, stealthily fantasizing the first kiss. At a later time, they became these young adults staring deep into the others eye with a romantic confidence, gaping at the beauty of the lover’s body, admiring the other’s ideal self.

And then they transformed into enthusiastic middle aged couple. Comfortable in the cozy routine of daily life, looking out for the other’s horoscope predictions , planning holidays together, forgiving the shallow and inspiring aspiration. And then, ofcourse at odd times they became an old couple that is together in dying and denial of an approaching death.

But such afterthought is for afterwards. For now, she consciously loses her sense of existence to him, only a heightened awareness of their together lives. The bedroom smells of them. It looks like them, heady and frenzied. She liked this lascivious form of their romance, this wanton sense of living in the ‘now’ and ineluctably berserk expression of love. She luxuriates in the agony of lust that is tearing them apart, rejoicing the inebriated shameless nakedness.

After hours of unchaste piety, the farewell beckons. The ritual of, ’I had a great time’, is done with. The cliché, ‘where do we go from here’, is done with. The declaration of undying love looks superfluous and irrelevant. They know that lame words spoken would blemish what the majestic silence of past few hours has created.

They stand at the threshold, looking at each other, trying to take in all of what their sight had to offer. They kiss, time and again, inspite of being satiated for now. Just so that some reserves from now can be of help on needy nights. Letting go of the other now, seemed as impossible as the desire to go back to childhood. But letting go Mumbai, she did. The city had given her enough and more.
You surely move on from places. But people. Well, no.