The rain pattered against the window panels. It was too difficult to concentrate on Pride and Prejudice. Aashi wanted to get out of the house and get her things done. Those jars were lying empty on her kitchen racks and needed to be refilled. She had been munching on Parle-G and Tea for 2 days now. She hadn’t talked to anyone for what accounted to a week. Her phone lay by that little table near the sofa that she used as her bed in that little house she had been calling home for a year now.
A year back, Aashi moved out of her parent’s house. She wanted to know what it was like to make her breakfast, wash her own clothes and live all by herself in a new city. Wake up Sid had a huge influence on her aspirations. Aaysha found a friend in the city of dreams the first day, Aashi was yet to meet someone. But hope has been her home.
She finally stood up, took her wallet without taking the phone and with an umbrella stormed out of the house. A walk round the corner took her to the railway station where she boarded the train she hated to step into now. After getting herself a grab hanger, Aashi travelled in her thoughts with the local train…
The first time she stepped out on the Andheri Station, how she had looked at the flocks of people with wonder in her eyes, the way their legs never stopped moving, their hands clutching their bag and then the handle and sometimes another hand. How even at the end of a day, this hustle didn’t take away the beauty from their eyes. And she joined the crowd to be one of them. And soon she was lost as a hand from the Grab Handle of the Slow Train.
Pudhil Station Andheri…
Aashi shook her head and got down. Her hand brushed up against the man who got down with her. He said sorry and moved on. And without her knowing, she kept moving in his direction. Was it those eyes that looked like Howard Roark or the jawline of Mr Darcy, she couldn’t put him in what can be called people. He seemed to belong to her fiction stories with hair like that, face that reflected his audacity and eyes that said more than his words could ever mean.
After walking for a while, he turned back and said, “Look, I am sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Aashi couldn’t believe herself when she uttered this, “Let’s have Tea!”
He stood aghast, not knowing what to do and still skeptical about the offer. After what seemed like a light year, he said, “Ok. Let’s go.”
The rain was still beating heavy against the umbrella. He didn’t have one and so she extended her hand and something that resembled an inviting smile. After a lot of brooding that went inside that head of his, he came inside, his left half already drenched. The white shirt stuck to his body made him look like a Greek God. What a man like him was doing in the local train? Was he one of those struggling actors who came to fulfil his big-star dream? Or just another dreamer like her?
Aashi has never been this outright before and she didn’t know what was driving her. But she dare not turn back now.
They reached near a small shop that was masked by those fancy lights of the surrounding cafe and eatery outlets. He opened the door and went inside without waiting for her to join or holding the door for her.
Aashi couldn’t believe someone would give her a cold shoulder this way. Afterall, holding the door is a common courtesy and no one was telling him to be Hodor anyway!
She was already regretting this rash first-time ever decision. Was she this alone? Or was it the fantasies that the city gave birth to finding someone to confide in those dingy chai shops?
They took the end table from where one can see the drops hazing away anything at a distance of more than 800 m. There was no one in sight in the shop except the man by the Chai table and them, the rain already separated them from what was Mumbai.
He was looking far beyond her. Into what seemed like a universes of his own thoughts. She finally spoke.
“Aashi. I am Aashi.”
He seemed to be coming back to the same space and time. “Ansh.”
A pause. Dead Silence. The kind that makes you feel like you are in vacuum. Like those sci-fi movies show you the kind of destruction after a villain attacks. Only here, there wasn’t a superhero to come save her world.
“I am a Writer. Not the ones you might have read. Not the self-published either. To be honest, I don’t even feel like one. I just used to vent out once in a while on social media and through appreciation from friends, I thought I could be one. So I came here.”
She started sobbing.
“What was I even thinking? That a few social media likes and share could make me a Writer? That I could bleed away thousands of pages that would be read by people like me who appreciate the kind of love other than what movies are made of?”
Sobbing continues…
“I should never have left home. This place is costing me more than I can make and there is not a page that my laptop has which can be published. And above all, I feel so alone in this city surrounded by people all the time. What was I thinking?”
His eyes finally saw her. From the inside out. It felt like looking at the mirror.
The sobbing receded. He touched her hand. It felt like thousand drops of rain falling on her when her surrounding was all sunny.
“I am the Character of the Book that you have been thinking all these days in your shady home that you can’t afford. I have been following you since the time I saw you seeing the people with wonder in your eyes at the Andheri station, the first time you arrived in the city. I have been with you, in the local train, that night club you went to hook up, that library where you picked up Pride and Prejudice, and I have always been with you. I have been in your mind even in your past week of no-contact-please. I am in your mind. Taking shape as the character that you will be weaving stories about. I am waiting to live the way you have imagined me to. I am already present in those unfinished stories lying in your laptop.”
She brushed aside her tears, and Mumbai came into her line of sight once again.
“Bhaiya, Ek Cutting Chai.”
FlakySpirits 