the "seconds" speaks...

“Prologue.

This is when I wonder how even a short moment with her could have such an impact on me….”

And we took a stand at an empty parking space. She rested on her two-wheeler and I rested in front of her. The darkness pooled all around us; the shades from the street light added effects to her features; the silence around amplified the sound of her hums, and above all her eyes were fixed on me. My eyes met the boundaries of her hair; the thoughts filled the shelves of her expectations, and the reflex of comfort sustained throughout. I left the hands in my pocket, still consciously being gripped by her presence. I fixed my feet on the ground, but I could barely feel the downward pull as she kept me off my feet.

I finished the last word of a conversation that started from nowhere, it was her turn. And then, she raised her lips, the moment could not have got better, her eyes opened wide, the moment got brighter from better, she tilted her head at an undefined angle, shifting the moment from the brightness to the clear path, and a strand of hair floated on mid-air, taking away the moment along with it to nowhere again.

An innocent sound conceived from her, she calls it as a response, which never makes sense to me, but managed to convince me all the more. I realized it not about the reply she gives, it is about the pitch she chooses to converse in, the trajectory of her hand that arrests my eyes, the right proportion of emotions she mixes and the fact that, whatever she says is going to make sense.

We knew we were alone, we knew we had no one watching out for us, we knew the world is below us, and we knew we had nothing to worry about as long as we are “we”. I saw my shadow falling apart, I took a leap to notice that it fell beside hers; this is where I am privileged to say “even my shadow has fallen for you”.

I looked above, I looked around, I looked at her, I looked above, I looked around, I looked at her, no matter wherever I looked, I know the girl is looking at me, and I know “I have seen you like you haven’t seen yourself”.

"Epilogue

Seconds passes by, no count on how many, cause I am sure the time never repeats itself, but the moments with her does. “

the "distance" speaks...

I woke up, took a wrong turn, somehow managed to accomplish my morning routines and took a peek out of the window. The picture has changed. My thoughts tried climbing the fence, wandered around looking for its match, But all in vain. As a few moments passed, it started to sink into me that she wasn’t within my reach. I still can’t remember the instance I decided to take step to be apart, or that is where my quota of ‘losing my mind’ fills in. Packing clothes has never been a problem; a random pick by my hands, not my mind! And this is where an engineer’s brain malfunctions. Taking into the considerations the flair for compact machines, there couldn’t be a compact back pack to take his girl with him! The mass, weight and the presence of air couldn’t be compressed.  

I sent a “Bye!” and she redirected it to me. We both know the bye is for the home and not for us. The driver ignited the engine, drrrrrrrmmmmmm, the bus started vibrating, not cause of the engine, but cause of my heart beat. It pounded faster than normal trying to fast forward the whole trip. But, failed. I sent “Leaving! “And by now you must know for what the message was… (the “leaving” was for Chennai and not for us”). The bus left the city. The points took its steps down, the punch line” wherever you go, our network follows” vanished in thin air, or maybe it follows “you” and not the bus. I moved the phone to all possible perimeter, circumference, diameter and area, not knowing the concept that the mobile towers never had the mobility. At last, the time convinced me to sleep. I woke up under the same sun, under the same sky, on the same state, everything was the same, but the fact remained, she wasn’t at my reach, and thus the sun, sky, state felt new, felt lost.

The word “miss” felt obsolete.  I was able to tell her I missed her, I missed her presence, but nothing actually conveyed what was actually missing. The right words would have been.. I am “nothing” without you. I always wanted to be a super hero as a kid, to save the earth. But this time, I wished I was a super hero, not to save earth, to fly towards her, yeah, a super hero to  save himself.

The day(s) went blank and the return ticket seemed to add a lot colours to the blankness. I boarded the train, tadak….tadak….. not the heartbeat, it’s the train, starting to vibrate in every possible slow beats, starting the countdown to increase the distance by time, where I wished the factor could be unity. Well, one has to abide by the laws of “ time” and “distance” to reach what he deserves, I am done with those to reach Chennai, but not with her.

the "bye" speaks...

One among the three letter words that lasts longer than its complete pronunciation. She never uses the word in most parts of our conversations, but that remains the word of maximum impact. There were times when I wished that the word never had a meaning or even that it was never coined. Either it was enunciated with anger, or wished with a smile; both added a gram to the soul. She wraps her face, composes herself with the vehicle, looks at me, and that is when I have to accept the fact that I’m actually going to fall for the word. At times her lids managed to convey the part and to be fair, it was never fair to make me see it.

As she waved her hand, disturbing the air balance around, bringing down the heat, making my feet cold, whispering the word and signing it in my brain, all I wished was the moment never had a place in time. She never smiled, or cried when she gave me the word, all she had on her face was the last hope that the word never ends spelling. The order of letters has been purposefully designed , with the “b” at the beginning and the “y” in the middle , because even if I didn’t know its meaning, it would have taken a longer time to drain the departure same as the time taken to browse it in a dictionary.

A “bye-bye” sounds lot better than a single version of it, reason, I can still have a last chance to think that the “bye” was for the previous one and not for me, and also, let’s face it, it gives me a fraction of time more to be with her. She means a lot to me, so does her words, may be if I could register by default she doesn’t make any sense at the end. The problem is with how the human brain works, it never digests the sound that is attached with a little essence of salt, and thus it stays at the top, never decomposes. Unfortunately, the last voice of hers takes along the wetness of the throat making it dry, the harvest of the eye making it red, making the sound a solid wave which probably takes a life time to settle down the brain and forgotten.

It is too much for a single word, it is not acceptable to bring out these thoughts in exchange for a small action, it is too hard to spend a time on accepting the fact that something so small can affect a soul ; to explore the thoughts that run all around the mind when it the word is uttered, but the fact remains, you will never know until it is heard from “yours”.