Praying For Rain [Part - II]

Bhadra (August/September)

                Time was lost to me when I sat with her there on that park bench sketching her portrait. I deliberately would take a world of time as I drew and erased the contours of her face close to a thousand times. You would think I wanted that picture to be the best among my preceding drawings. And that was true in part but I was just lengthening our time together, cherishing this proximity, engraving her beauty, her nuanced ticks and habits into my eyes. The way she bit the back of the pen and the way she squinted her eyes when she was thinking, the way her breast quivered when she concentrated hard – I wanted time to imprint it all into my memory. Some days, overcome by the prospect of no more rainy days, I wished this painting job of mine to be my solitary mortal task.

                Now, praying for rain was a habit of mine every night before I went to sleep and rejoicing a gift when it did rain the next morning. Although one particular question did keep nagging my mind during these days. How old was she and what did she do? Gathering up courage bit by bit I finally managed to ask her.

                “Twenty seven,” she said without any fuss and I felt stupid for feeling paranoid about inquiring on it. “But I have the smarts of a fifteen year old.” She added chuckling.

                “I don’t think that at all.” I said calculating in my head an age difference of a decade between us. “And what is it that you do?”

                  “I have a special job of ‘reception-ing’ at a language institute and also attending an IELTS class at the same place. I might fly off to Australia or New Zealand or the US of A any day – I just want to travel the world really  – so you better finish up that sketch . . .”

                    "When you are travelling the world, don't forget to write poetry about the rain, about us."

                That monsoon was ours. We wouldn’t have known or cared if civilizations had been destroyed or revived while we were in that trance. It felt to us that the records of time will include solely the tale of her and me. So fevered was our passion that we didn’t realize monsoon was nigh about to breathe its last.

                The grass around was bedecked in dewy beads left by the recent shower this morning when she asked of me, “Have you finished it yet?”

                “No.” I replied tersely, smudging the grains of colour together to get the perfect complexion of her eye lids.

                “What’s taking you so long? Aren’t you afraid of the prospect of it not raining any day now?”

                “Perhaps it is fate slowing down my hand so that these few months would not be our last meeting.”

                “You know, we don’t have to meet exclusively on rainy mornings only. I feel they are spoilt – the rainy mornings – given our preference, maybe we should change that seeing that showers are so few and far in between nowadays.” Her indignation was a sight to behold.

                “No, we had decided on rainy mornings and it will be just those days that we can see each other. We have to protect the sanctity of that doctrine.”

                The sun was peeping at her through the clouds. It danced around her pupils as she turned to me. “Say it out loud that you do not want to see me meet me now.”

                “Oh, believe me I do.”

                “Yet you do not feel like it on mornings when it is sunny”

                “I don’t care if it’s the slightest squall of rain, I will be here. What more would you have me do. I want our meeting to be special, that’s all. That’s why we can’t break that rule”

                “Oh, can’t we?” Her eyes possessed insolation of a candid seductiveness. She was biting her lower lip, red this morning like the bruise on the clouds infront of the recently reawakened sun.

                Time slowed. My breath was suddenly shallow and my heart thumping a violent calypso. I leaned in toward her. I let my lips rest on hers. Her lips were downy like tepid rain. The red of her lips transmitting to mine until like a violent nightmare, she suddenly pulled herself away from me. Her eyes were overwrought with an intense apprehension about them.

She didn’t once rest her gaze on me next as she collected her notebook, her handbag and her umbrella.

                I realized I’d misjudged the whole situation. “Listen –” I tried abortively to redeem myself but what could I have said really? Sorry? I wouldn’t have said that. I could only watch wordlessly as she, eyes downcast, walked away and disappeared behind the swivelling gate. I looked up and could only curse the wretched sun.

                Quite conveniently, the rain stopped completely from the next day. She had taken with her the monsoon and our medium for interaction. On my way to school, every day, I made a point of walking into the park in faint hope of perhaps finding her seated there on that bench. But of course she wouldn’t be there. Why would she be?

                I prayed every night for the sky to tear up in the morning but instead the next day would laugh swelteringly at my ignominy.

                Like so, three months passed with no rain and not a shadow of my unnamed infatuate.