The first time I saw her she had a tear in her eye and a smile on her lips and a spray paint can in her hand. I had rushed to a corner where the wall on my right swivelled a sharp right, and had felt a wet fuzz going across my chest. Next I knew I was standing before her with my silk tie and white crisp shirt splattered by fluorescent red. And I forgot for a moment that I had to say something but when I remembered to say something I noticed she was already saying something.
“…and what do you do when you see your ex happier with his new girlfriend? Both of them grinning into a bar and his eyes crinkling like they never did when he was with you?”
“Of course you stop stalking them,” I said. “Maybe you let your emotion sort of sink down till it dissolves. And, I’m not sure, spray paint strangers?”
“Shit. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry. Seems like you’ve got worse problems right now.”
“I- well, no, but who runs along a street wearing dandy clothes this time of the hour?”
“I had an interview in that tall building over there.”
“How did it go?”
“Lady, read my face. It didn’t go anywhere. It whimpered and died.”
“Siya.”
“See you too.”
“That’s my name, idiot. Come here, this side, a word on this?”
“Disgusting. The red isn’t contrasting against this shade of purple and the motif isn’t matching with the rest of the graffiti. Seems out of place. You sure there’s no cop rounding this area?”
“This is my boyfriend’s house, damn, my ex-boyfriend’s house. And I wanted to ruin it. But what on earth was I thinking? This is freaking childish.”
“If you really wanted to ruin it, then disgusting should sound like a compliment to you. When did he cut it out on you? Not too long ago, I guess, since you’re still weepy about it.”
“Day before.”
“Bet it sucks now. Relax, it’ll peter out.”
“You sure?”
I shook my head. “Trying to be a helpful stranger.”
“Hey sorry again, for spraying you.”
“Stop giggling.”
“Uh, ah, no, I’m really sorry.”
“You’re making it worse.”
“I know. I know…shit, I just can’t keep it in. Can’t.” She smiled and tried to hold it in and failed and burst out laughing and blurted a sorry that her eyes didn’t mean and started repeating them all again. I stopped her short with a palm of my hand.
“Can I join in? I’m an expert at messing things up.”
“You want to do this? Why?”
“Because he must’ve been a pipehead to dump you. You’re beautiful.”
“I wish he was cheesy as you.”
“Ha. You wish. Give me that can.”
“Here. So, what went wrong with your interview?”
“In the middle of it I started having second thoughts and the whole goddamned thing caved in. I’m a fool when it comes to office jobs. Somehow it clenches my gut because that’s not my thing and that’s something that has led me to smash all previous job interviews and some past relationships and self-confidence and everything good that could happen to me.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not this nasty normally. And stop peeking at my shirt. I know the paint is seeping in. I’m going to file an FIR if it doesn’t come off my skin.”
She covered her mouth pretending to think but her teeth showed and I knew that she was choking a laughter. I said she could laugh and maybe I would join in it as well because it was the last job interview I was going to appear for. And although it pained to have bombed it I wanted to at least have a good laugh about it.
“Are you good at anything else?” she asked.
“Look at me turn this house into a French masterpiece. Step back.”
I drew huge curlicues of Satan’s horns across the wall till I realized she was running away from me and spotted a watchman running towards me. I swung my coat onto the crook of my elbow and turned around and began sprinting behind her. Three turns, then a dark alleyway rushed at me and a dark ceiling flew over my head and I was lost in the middle of somewhere. I could hear the tap tap of the watchman’s stick against concrete but I knew he wouldn’t find me. I could hear the honk honk of cars jostling on a highway on the other side of a wall that blocked the face of the alley. I had forgotten her name, so I wondered how to call her without hooking the watchman’s attention. So after some thinking I started whistling like a bird. But then two arms came up shooting from behind and grabbed my mouth. She whispered in a moist dewy voice that I ought to shut the fuck up because my voice would also make the constable doing neighbourhood rounds suspicious and then put his stick in places where we wouldn’t be comfortable. I stopped bird-singing then and smelled her palms which smelled cold and petrol-like because of the spray paint. I turned at her and found her face dry and her smile tucked back in and her cheeks wiped off of tears and asked her where should we run. To this she didn’t say anything. Not a word.
She looked up at me and I saw a bead of tear sticking to her upper eyelid. She allowed me to look at the orange street light playing in that tiny bead and then she lowered her head.
“We’re not running anywhere,” she said.
I was about to ask her why when I heard something break inside her chest. Then her arms loosened off her shoulders and her torso bent forward and I heard more things breaking inside her chest. I held her by her shoulder but she jerked me away and sat down on the stony road with her legs bent and crossed and big tears dropping on small grains of sand. Sounds of pain coming out of her throat. The sound made the watchman peek around the corner and the sight of us made him disappear again. I knew that he was not coming back from the tap tap of his stick going slow and windy. I sat down in front of her and stared at the closed glass window behind her because I could not bring myself to look at her.
“You loved him a lot,” I said.
“I don’t know how to love more or less or truly or falsely but know only how to love.”
“And you say I’m cheesy.”
“Shut up.” She knuckled tears off her cheek. “You’re an awful painter. You should never think about being a painter because you wouldn’t like people to trash your paintings. There’s nothing more rib-crunching than to watch something you love being trashed by people.”
“I think it’s sadder to watch someone else make something you love happier.”
“Take this as a tip, mister. You should improve your silence skills. Know when to let out a breath without words. And yeah, you should also stop painting before you hear more humiliating comments. Find something that you’re really good at like a sport or a job or something that would at least keep you off hunger.”
I stayed quiet before telling her that I thought that we should go now and she should return to her house because the air was getting cold and the road was melting against it. And that I had heard somewhere that people caught a bad cold if they cried on a winter evening with no warm clothes draped around them. She said she was wearing a sweater when she had come but she burnt it in front of her ex’s house because he had gifted it to her and she wanted to show him what she thought of him and his gifts now. I said I am sure he would get the point and then I saw her shaking.
“Where do you live?” I lifted up my collar and pulled down the knot of my tie.
“Next city. Towards north. Where is your house?”
“Same city,” I lied. “How are you planning to travel back?”
“I’ll catch the last train.” She threw me a look that lasted a moment longer than a moment. “Hmmhmm.”
“Want me to drop you?”
“You don’t live in the next city. Quit lying. I’m still clinging to the good ol’ don’t trust strangers policy. We just met.”
I watched her walk off around the corner.
I imagined the rest. I imagined that we stopped an auto and asked it to take us to the railway station. The auto had one of the back wheels broken and I had to keep myself from hopping towards her on the seat by gripping a rod overhead. At the station the last train was already in so we ran and jumped in and while jumping in my hand grazed against her and I felt a tremble still there in her knuckles. We went to the next city and took a rickshaw to her house and I dropped her off like they show in the movies. We ended it with a good night glance at each other.
I was still imagining her giving me the sweet parting glance when I saw her returning.
“Here, keep this.” She handed me a tie in a box. “If you have a change of mind and decide to shove yourself into another interview, this will come handy. Yours is battered and something about you tells me you don’t have a spare.”
“Hope you didn’t barge into your ex’s house and steal this.”
“What do you think of me? I didn’t have enough cash to get you a new shirt and that shop doesn’t accept cards.”
“You shouldn’t have burnt that sweater. It’s freezing today.”
I thanked her and told her things would be fine because you never know and she said things might not be fine because you never know. I saw chilled smoke coming out of her mouth as she said goodbye and somehow that looked magical and happening on a place behind the moon. Smearing me with a smile she walked off and before long I found out there was a part of me that she took with her and never cared to return. That feeling left me wrecked until I looked down and discovered that on the back of my new tie’s box she had scribbled her phone number. I did not go after her that evening because I was afraid one more look at her would make me the way I had found her.
With a tear in my eye and a smile on my lips.
If someday God floats down and asks me if I want to change anything in the moment we met, if he asks, should I dim the moon a notch? Brighten up the stars and sprinkle some clouds to make their lights fuzzy and cuddly? I would say, no thank you, but please, oh please just freeze that moment in a crystal ball so that I can keep it in my pocket and take it out when I feel lonely and look at it and forget what made me lonely. Because on that winter evening, the whole world felt like that, like a crystal ball with snow miniatures inside, frosty and grainy.
sumitstories 