Lateral...

It is a rainy afternoon. The fuzzy drizzle has stopped, but bigger drops continue to drip from the wet leaves. I sit at a restaurant table, waiting for the order to arrive. And to kill the time, I pick up a yellow paper napkin, find my pen from my pockets, and start to scribble the first few words of unsaid sentences...

Its been more than an year now. In similar settings he used to wait for her to arrive. To pass the glued seconds that didn't seem to pass into minutes, he used to do the same. Pick up the paper tissue napkins, and find a pen or pencil and start to write. Sometimes he had to borrow the pen from the waiter. But sentences he always had.

The sky has taken on a shade of bluish gray. One can see a few stars twinkle from behind the stray puffs of candyfloss clouds. Though there are a few people in the many tables around me, but it is peaceful here. I look at the couple seated next to my table, the boy in the blue jeans and a white shirt, has his arm around that pretty girl in a crushed cream shirt and almond pants. The steel bracelet on his right hand sometimes shines through the black silk of her hair, just over her right shoulder where a little american diamond solitaire catches the fading lights and gleams. Her left cheek rubs against his sometime-crisp cotton shirt collar. They just seem lost within their collective selves. They have that serenity.

While writing he had one eye fixed on to the swiveling glass doors. Amongst the multitude of people and autos and cars and buses and rickshaws faring their way to somewhere. he kept on looking for the one for whom he was here. Someone who he felt should never leave his side, not for a day not for an hour not for a minute. Not for a second. Never.

The waiter arrives with a hot cup of coffee. I confirm whether it is the way I ordered it. Bitter with little sugar. Its a olive green cup. Perfect color to compliment the weather and the verdant variegated shades of green that forms the landscape framed by the glass window to my right.

There the cups were white. And coffee as well as tea was served in the similar cups. He had always found it a trifle funny. For him coffee meant big mugs with thick wide brims. Tea was meant to be sipped. But coffee for him, was a complete experience in itself. Coffee had been his only companion when he had no one. Since she had breathed the breaths of life in his zombied self, the taste of beans had changed a bit. But while he waited, he usually had a cup of coffee. And by the time he reached the half cup. She'd always be there. And then she'd sip the rest from his cup. It became 'their' cup.

The pair next to me put down their cups of coffee. I can hear the clink of the cups on the table top. He picks all the stuff, bags books and the purse and they proceed towards the bill counter. Together. I just watch.

He would be generally towards the last lines of what he was writing for her. What we call the fag end of the composition. And then suddenly from the corner of the eye, he would recognize her crossing the road. She always walked gingerly, with her eyes flitting between her left had right. And her feet tapping away, on the gray broken asphalt, of the Indian roads. He always thought of the phrase, "the ground beneath her feet", every time he saw her walking. His pen stopped in midtrack. The words just froze. As she neared the glass doors, he could see her magical smile reach her eyes. And her eyes saw him waiting on that table near the pillar. the table where they always sat. And passed away the hours that seemed like the drifting sands from an hourglass. Just seeping away like the tightly held sands seep away from a closed fist.

I have almost finished my coffee cup. It has started to drizzle again. The couple has left, another one has settled in another table, at another corner, near the other window. I just linger for a while. I'll let both of them talk away till they can. Share their stories, relate their woes. Touch each other through words. And try to attain the communion, that is the goal of every relation. Through spirit, through the body. The attainment of a higher plane. The crescendo that transcends the highest scales. The eternity wrapped withing the three words that they will definitely say to each other. More than once.

I, in the mean while, will have to go now. I look towards the paper napkins that I hold. They generally used to be white. Sometimes they were pink, at other times green. Today they are yellow. Things keep on changing. Like the ink that writes on the thin sheets of paper. Sometimes the tables change, sometimes the writer does. It all happens, somewhere right here. Like driftwood characters, inks, papers, and stories change on the varied canvas of life. Here everything remains the same. The difference is just a lateral drift. A horizontal shift over the latitudes and longitudes. Maybe on the levels of spacetimes too.... but that is too complicated. Rain is not, it just falls... Ground gets wet, leaves fall. And people sometimes feel nostalgic. But life you see goes on.

From one lateral to another.