A bend in the road - Vol 1

12. On starry nights

"You and I, are so similar yet different. With a wall separating us, we both lie awake.

You, indulge in physical exertion while I, lie awake letting the demons of my past get the better of me."

She opens the drawer to peek at the smiling picture before closing it.

"At the outset we both are such different people, but in the inside, I guess we aren't all that different.

The scars we carry define us, don't they?

And at times like these, I can't help but wonder:

Will two imperfect people support each other?

Will two broken hearts make up to one?"

She looked at what she had written and closed the journal with a thud. 

She had been writing quite frequently these days and though she was no poet, she started penning down her thoughts and more often than not, the muse had been the same person.

She sighed as she took back the black and white picture from her table drawer. It had been with her ever since she had paid a visit to the store room and found it there. The smiling picture of her boss,  Maan Sir was smiling back at her and she leaned back in her chair a little as she snuggled in it, taking the picture into her hands, passing a hand over it, wiping away imaginary dust.

Her stay in Dehradun was almost coming to an end, with two weeks remaining, and somehow she wished time to be suspended like this forever.

Delhi in all honesty was nothing like this sleepy but beautiful town. She had always been a little outgoing and had enjoyed having people over even back in her village and was that kid who always looked forward for someone to get married in her cousins so she could have all her cousins over at one place. 

But after being here, suspended in another time and space, with nobody but her and Maan Sir in the guest house in Dehradun, the household help still away to their hometown on leave, she almost wished not to go to her life at Delhi, and the crowded office that awaited her.

The lazy sunday afternoon extended in lazy minutes as she and Maan sir had cooked and had lunch together, at the dining table.

She felt hot, in the sunny day but it wasn’t just the weather that made her break into a sweat. She was aware of his eyes on her time and again, and she felt a sweat drop trail by the side of her neck and suspected a pair of eyes that followed its trail.

When she raised her eyes to meet his, the man that he was, he didn’t look away but pinned her with the same intensity for a couple of more minutes than she was used to, and she observed for the first time how beautiful his eyes looked, the dark brown of his irises, with dark eyelashes around his eyes.

“You want anything more?” He had asked her and she almost burnt her lips with the soup as she looked at him perplexed.

Trust her to over think and jump the gun for as innocent a question as that. Of course he was talking about serving her another couple of rotis. Although the tell tale signs of amusement in his eyes told her another story altogether.

That was an a few hours ago.

Right now though, she sat in her room, curled with the book full of meaningless words written every night for the man that was in her next room, sweating out again as she looked out at the starlit night and sighing, closing her eyes.

If rains bought turmulous memories earlier, starry nights these days had been tumultuous although for different reasons altogether.