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meethi boliyaan sun lo aasmaani rangon ki -meethi boliyaan
Saad dialed Katherine as I sat Stefan in my lap. Saad was natural with cats. It's said, the sweetest souls love cats. Saad's mother panned the phone on Katherine. I waved holding Stefan's paws in my hands and smiled, awkwardly. I was always awkward with cats and kids. I didn't know what to do with them. It was never legal to bake and eat them either so I kept smiling instead.
"Kath, look, dada misses you so much." Katherine meowed in response. He focused the camera on Stefan, "Look, mommy brought you a new friend. She even named her Stefan, your doppelganger soulmate. See, he even has vampire teeth." Mommy and dada? The people who often have a chokehold on you, don't realize how much they edge you but you're still pushed to the guillotine and you, you are a lover. You have no other choice rather than beheading yourself. He did not even realize what he had said and I let that slip as if it was so casual, as if I was loved and owned everyday.
"How are you guys coping, Sehra? That cat is adorable by the way."
"We're good but occasionally, ghar ki yaad aati hain."
"Aajao vapis, summer vacations are cornering, right? And abhi dhoom dhaam se shaadi bhi toh karni haina?"
I was waiting for Saad to say something but he was rigid, lost in some thought so I smiled and finished the conversation swiftly.
I kept the phone aside and got up to finish my assignments. I molded half of the texture of the brain when Saad stood leaning on the doorframe. When I was too immersed in my work to shift my attention to him, he sat on the carpet beside me.
"Are you going to make brain soup?"
"I'm designing a building that is going to look like the human brain."
"That's interesting. Can I help you?"
"Sure." I handed him a part of the air dry clay. He created rolls out of it to fit as nerves and neurons. "You know, the cerebrum, this is the room where the kids will play, the medulla is the room of memories and the cerebellum: the eyes to the heart."
His hand brushed over mine plastering the piece of clay on the memory room. There's something so intimate about hands. I once read an article that said human bodies are made to perfectly function as lovers; how our hands perfectly fit into another, how our chins fit into the crook of someone's neck. Resting his hand over mine, he asked, "Are you not happy?" I looked at him, perplexed, as to what made him question that. "What?"
"Are you happy making a home with me?" The metaphor in his words and those black eyes looking into mine. If God made the Earth, the trees and the heavens, He also made such beautiful moments and He made us to live them.
My hair flew before my eyes, the mud on my face and the smile, oh so evident, I was dying.
"Yes, of course I'm happy. You're a great person, Saad."
"You said you missed home. I was worried. I'm trying to do my best, I'm sorry if you're upset about anything."
It was more than almost a month of us living together and I still did not know much about his life or what made his so reserved. It was like he guarded himself from something and he just did not know what to do with his walls rising as though he was freshly wounded and he did not know how to tend it.
"Don't worry, I'm okay and you're doing nothing wrong"
He smiled, "So, um, tell me about yourself. How were you as a child?"
"Me? How any child would be, cute."
"No, Sehra, tell me what you liked. What was your favorite cartoon?"
"Umm, I think Shaun the sheep. That sheep was a dumb one but I liked him. He was pathetic."
"It's a little confusing if you like him or not."
I laughed, it was my language. I would hate the aspects of the things I loved.
"You, tell me, what are your interests?"
"I love pottery." Looking at the magnificent piece he helped making, he definitely loved pottery.
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hello, how are you doing? thank you for being here<3
