Notes

The dinner table is being set at a certain rhythm. The green porcelain and cutlery carefully juxtaposed, the smells of the meal gently waft in from the kitchen. He was on his reading chair, smoking. She was doing odd little things here and there when not stirring the pot or checking the oven.

From the corner of his eyes, he’d look at her. His woman of twenty something years. What age had done to her. She actually looks nicer by the day, he caught himself thinking.

Mozart ofcourse is playing recklessly in the background, a sonata in C major. She has the prelude playing in her head off and on, even when it wasn’t being played on the piano. She reaches over to grab something from the edge of the kitchen counter.

From the corner of her eyes, she sees a photograph in a silver frame. A picture of them from many, many years ago. From a time when they were really young, horribly truamatised by feelings of many kinds, and yet when you look at the picture, you look at two people who were so completely in love.

The meal sizzles to a completion. She sets it down on the table, and he is there filling their glasses just the way he has been for all those years together. For no particular reason, and yet for too many to put down, she smiles in her mind- and a mild reflection of that smile plays in the corners of her mouth. He catches her looking at him and gazes back.

***

The young twenty something scribbles the last few words and gazes out the window of the café. Winter is almost here, and people scuttle by looking for more comfort and warmth in the grey of their everyday being. Mozart, the sonata in C major, is playing furiously in her head. And there are all these words dancing with the divine music, some of them his words. She found herself incapable of stringing all those words together to form complete sentences. All she could focus on at that moment was the blush on his cheeks, the music in her head and the people huddling outside in their greys.

She looked behind her at the rest of the café, for a teeny moment. All kinds of people seated and having discussions of every other kind over whatever caught their fancy for that moment. The guy at the far corner caught her eyes. She drew back into her world, where there were words and notes for company. And photographs of happy people squinting in the sun, radiating back each other’s warmth.

There was this feeling they shared, and both of them knew it. Like how only certain pianos respond to your touch among a whole lot, among a galaxy of choices. They had that- that dish without a name, that tune without a beginning or an end.

She uncrossed her legs, crossed them back and washed down the thoughts with the rest of the coffee. The cup was stained a colour of nude in the shaped of her lips. She cupped her hands over her ears, careful not to let in the sounds of the outside world, let the music play on in that very schizotypal way.

***

If I were to rip this sheet off my scratch pad and give it to you, if I told you that you’re the guy in there, that this is the sum of things I really want, making that meal for you twenty years from now, would you give it to me? Oh, would you?

For when there are other beginnings

Her nicely done up lashes looked on and off at the fuel indicator. Full. Anybody else watching her that evening would have called it a piece of poetry, poetry in seeming randomness. Her lavender lacquered nails rested on the steering wheel, as she waited for the lights to change.

It was this grey evening, one that seemed minutes away from a drizzle. The guy selling flowers round the corner was there. The yellow and red carnations and the lavender of the Iris danced in front of her eyes. Like how when you’re cooking with your soul, you sometimes reach out for things, like a dash of cinnamon, that your heart just says it belongs here, in the warmth of your cooking pot.

She wanted to step out in her chiffon summer dress and silhouettes, the blanched almondness of her skin dancing with joy as the first few drops of rain came down. But she drove on instead, drove on home. Watching signal after signal. A left here, a right there. And then just take the road ahead.

Before you know it, night creeps in on all of us. The prodigy playing symphonies on the piano is turned off, and the bed side lamp has a book lying next to it. Each speaking to the other of an evening of contentment, with the rain outside singing out odes and lasciviously conjuring up images of what can be togetherness and what is loneliness, in exactly that order.

From one chamber of dreams to another, she quietly tiptoes. Careful not to wake anyone up, not to disturb other dreams. And she floats amidst scents and colours and minds and wishes and horses and shades and blushes. In one of those chambers, one that was a colour between gentle autumn happiness thrown in with a light blue summer sky, he came. They had this chat. Something about waiting till July. And then he would tell her. She didn’t know what to do. Whether this is good or bad or ugly or undefined. Whether it would make her ache. Or if he was going to just gather her up and drive away to some place where there are no traffic signals, just rain on windshields.

And then the orchestra of dreams did a grand rendition of vague tunes, and her finger tips reached for the edge of the sheets. The erstwhile nicely done up lashes fluttered open. The bed lamp glowing a dreamlike yellow, the bookmark sticking out of a paperback. She remembered the dream. She remembered the face. She knew who it was.

In the expanse of that night, she lay awake.