Interlude in Rain...

In the dark sheet of night, it rains. The scenic beauty of the sleepy hills is lost in this liquid curtain. The camouflaged hills reveal their stealthy faces everytime the lightening makes its thunderous call. It is pitch dark but the few stars that manage to shine through the deluge reflect a thousand times within the countless rain drops. The moon has chosen to sleep tonight, while the earth takes her bath within the folds of this dark night.

A pair of yellow headlights shine in the distance, their scattered beams dance their way on the curvaceous road. The sputter of an old Ambassador Engine becomes clearer as it drags to a halt. The young passenger in the back seat struggles to open the door. His red and black jacket have borrowed a strange color in the rains. Amidst the complaints of having to endure a window that wont roll up and a ride that was amply punctuated with full stops, he pays his fare to the driver who sits nonchalantly through this all, smug in the knowledge that there are no other options available in this small place.

Having paid he turns to face the railway station. The rains in their ricochet recreate an olodum feat on the corrugated tin roof of the solitary platform. Their rhythm is a faint echo of the rolling thundercracks. To his back now is a chai-wallah in a make shift tea-shop, a canopied pushcart worn away by the the weather and the years. Glass jars with rusty capped with tight tin lids filled with slightly soggy salt wafers, and an old brown and green kerosene stove occupy the front side. Behind it sits the chai-wallah, an old man wrapped in a tattered grey and browth moth eaten blanket. Both the moths and him trying to save their share of warmth from the rogue rains. The old man's eyes are closed, perhaps the cold would retreat, finding no doors open. With him his whole teashop-cart-makeshift-home shivers, announcing their unity.

He opens the rusty gate. His soggy shoes falling on the sodden mud through the layer of water create an eerie sound, when coupled with the waxing and waning creak of the flat iron bar gate, that swings on its own place. He hastily walks to shelter beneath the platform roof. The ground there is peppered with the dripping drops creating islands of water in the worn sea of mud. The station master snores in his chamber, dimly lit by a small kerosene lantern. In the yellow light of the struggling flame, the whitewashed walls become a canvas of contoured shadows. The chalked writing on the grey black-board hung on the wall outside marks the timings of the trains to come and go. Huddling himself together he unzips his jacket to dig out a pack of cigarettes. With one dangling from his lips, he fumbles the pockets of his shirt, then jacket and then his jeans in search of a matchbox which is not there.

He looks outside towards the tea shop, but the rains make him decide otherwise. The lantern in Station master's room has given up, the platform is lit only by another lamp that hangs from the tin-roof and the lightning that doesnt cease. In one of these flashes he takes notice of a blanketed figure resting its back on the steel-truss pillars of the platform. He hollers to ask for matches. On no response he hollers again, but the silence between the two is as stubborn as the rain. In his adamance he calls out again, but this time a gust of wind has blown away the blanket, and his words.

Her face assumes a pallor in the bisque glow that envelops the platform. Her liquid eyes stand in stark contrast to the flashes of lightening, while the wind billows her curled wisps to a silken halo. He stands in a trance, his cigarette lies on the floor while he shakes himself to stir up his words.

'I am sorry, I did not know it was you; you toh would not have a match', he says. And she replies with the mum of her raining reserve.

Silence is powerful. In non-being it exists, and exudes a strength to comfort or unnerve. It is innate harmony between those who can communicate in their quitetude. But between two strangers it morphs into an iron curtain, deafening in its loudness. Its strength being directly proportional to the desire of one wanting to listen to the other.

But she is silent; and he desperate to cajole one syllable out of her pale-crimson lips.

'Would you like to have something?', he pushes his luck. 'Something, anything?'

She looks at him, 'a cup of tea.'

Dumbstruck! he utters, 'Cup of tea? Is that what you said? A cup of tea?'.

'Yes, a cup of tea.'

'Just a minute, I'll go and come back, you just stay here', and he scampers into the rain to the chai-wallah.

He shakes him from his sleep and asks for two special masala chai. The old man stares at him blankly, slowed down by his broken sleep. So he puts the kettle on the stove and says again, 'chai, special masale wali chai'. The old man lazily lights the stove, pours in the watery milk and waits for it to boil, while looking around for the box with tea-leaves, the jar of sugar, a spud of ginger and a pod of elaichi.

He in the meanwhile looks around impatiently; frequently he turns back to look over to the platform where she sits wrapped in an envied blanket, resting her back on the rusty cold steel-truss pillar. The milk has come to boil, the kettle pout whistles out a jet of steam. The old man puts in the tea-leaves and sugar and thrashed ginger and the crushed cardamom. The aroma wafts itself in the dewy air, but the steam whistles ceaselessly.

He looks back to the station, a steam engine is about to pull itself and a train to the platform. He asks the old-man about the train, and is told that it stops only for a minute. The tea has brewed, the refined aroma of its dry leaves, hangs in the mist now. He asks the chai-walla to hurry, in his heart doubt raises its ugly head. The old-man pours the tea into two small thick-glass-corrugated tumblers and hands it over. He hastily shoves money into his hands, and rushes with the tea. The raindrops steadily demolish the froth that had bubbled to the steaming surface.

As he gets closer he sees that she has left her place. To the far end of the train bogeys he sees a blanketed figure escorted by two men, climb into the compartment. The hot tea is still in his hand, the last of the froth bubbles keep bursting one by one. She turns her head and looks at him, while the engine whistles and starts to pull the train away.

His bag lies on the ground, the train has gained some momentum. His eyes are fixed to the compartment she got into. As it hurries past him he sees her eyes looking at him for a second or two. His hands involunatrily jut forward, to offer her the now cold tea in mute surrender. The train gathers speed and she moves out of the sight of his vision. He doesnt run to follow her, nor does he say anything. Now it is his silence that says it all, as words lose their audible meanings.

The last wisp of steam from the engine disappears into the night. The tea in his hands has also surrendered to the sorroundings. There are times when you can do anything for a cause, and yet do nothing. This perhaps was one of those times.

He empties the tea onto the steel rails below and like a narrator he pronounces with resignation as the red tail-light of the train faintly seeps through foliage from the bend below:

"Worlds shortest love story."

Note to the Reader: This, for those who have'nt related, is a small incident from the movie Dil Se... by Mani Ratnam. I have tried to write it in the way I saw it, and made a feeble attempt to capture the emotion. But I know, my attempt is very humble, and that the experience of seeing it is something that I can NOT write in my limited words and stunted narration. The first time I saw this piece, I resonated in kinship. It was a tale that I wanted to narrate, a story that I wished was mine. I am sure this happens with a lot of us at a lot many times. For life is full of such moments, and such stories that connect to our innerselves. Stories where we live straight from the heart, even if vicariously but Dil Se...