A hot cup of coffee, vapors rising off the cup in a haze, clouding her face…
Raindrop rhythms pitter-patter on the roof….
The faint scent of the freshly washed earth lingers in the olfactory long after Mother Nature has shown her wonders…
She sits by the window-sill holding the cup inside her hands willing it to spread its warmth to her as well…
Rains have a strange way of making one reminisce; ….
Brings back memories and along with it fresh aches and stab… things of the past beckon to her… signals and gestures her to unlock those carefully preserved memories, brush them out of their hiding place, glance through them once more and then push them back inside into the deep recesses of her mind where they would stay safe until the next time it rained….
What had happened to her life… from who she was to how she is…. From the person she was to the one she had become… transformation some call it… … or in the most esoteric sense metamorphosis… good, bad, ugly – she did not know…
What changed her?? Why did she become like this?? She was a carefree, happy-go-lucky, bubbly girl… when did she change into this dull, dreary droopy girl???
She fell in love… And she fell hard!
No, it was not like the movies… nor like the books she read… lightning did not strike, bells did not chime, no one swept her off her feet… but she still fell hard for Him. He was nothing different from the rest of the tribe she associated him with. He had nothing special so as to speak of… until then she did not know that she could be capable of such love…. Unconditional, pure, unadulterated absolute love….
He was cute, alright! That curly mop of hair that flopped over his forehead every time he shook his head… the way his eyes lit up when she walked into the room… the way she missed him when he left the room even for a minute… when she was with him, she was unmindful of the rest of the world… they simply did not exist for her! She was that much in love…
She had met him when she was waiting for her bus in front of her college… it was raining again that day and both of them looked miserable standing in that downpour …. They had bonded instantly! He came to her and stood shyly without uttering a word… she was the one who started talking to him… come to think of it… she was the only one who ever spoke!!! He only listened!! And how sweet is that!!!
They spent almost all their time together after that… where she went he followed her like Mary’s little lamb… if she got angry at him he would not eat but just sit and sulk until she called to him and soothed him with consoling words, and pacified him…
They had had such wonderful moments together …. Going for long walks, sitting on the beach looking at countless sunsets, munching on the snacks at the beach, playing tag, walking back home tired and muddy…. And of course rains! Who could ever forget that!! That special tribute that they paid to rain together, standing for hours under the spray of cloudburst, but running inside the moment it changes to thunderstorms… as she recollected he was always scared of thunderstorms… a faint smile tugs at the corners of her lips… there were so many of those memorable moments that she could recall…
Until that fateful day!! The fight and the aftermath…
It had been so silly! He had spilt a bottle of ink on her project idea… she had been working on it all day long and it was in its finishing stages… she was quite proud of it… it was something that she had been living and breathing (apart from him of course!) for about 2 months and she was almost close to completing it and wrapping it up… he had come rushing in to the room to show her something and had accidently jostled the bottle of ink… Splash! It fell all over her hard slog and the hours she had put in burning the midnight oil… all were washed away in hues on blue, red and black…. In that moment of fury, rage took over and she had shouted at him… she was unmindful of the words she said… he tried cajoling her and begging her forgiveness… she was unrelenting until he rushed out of the house…
The next thing she heard was tires screeching to a halt on the asphalt… horns blowing, a yelp of pain and then silence!!!
She ran outside to find him lying still on the path… unmoving… lifeless… frozen in that moment of time…
And just like that she had lost her best friend… the one being she had held close to her heart… the one soul she had loved with all her heart…
How could someone change her so much?? How could someone show her how much they meant to her?? There was not a moment that she did not regret it…
It had been abt a month now! The letters were almost faint on the tombstone where she had buried him!!! But she could still make it out…
“The times spent with you are like memory’s treasure; the beauty of which has no measure…!”
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