(This one won me the Gold Batom at Blog-A-Ton!!! )
This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 39; the thirty-ninth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The theme for the month is "Break"
He sprang out of bed with
the first beep of the alarm. Excitement flush on his face, like that of a new
bride on her wedding day, he scurried about his chores. He gelled and parted
his hair and combed it neatly, putting a stray strand of hair into place. Donning
his favourite shirt and a spray of perfume on it, he was raring to go. She would
be waiting and he couldn’t afford to make her wait.
He mounted his bike as if it
were a horse and as he rode he felt the cool breeze kiss his face. He wished
she would one day kiss him like that! He felt his heart race as he got down from
his bike and walked towards the office. She looked down at him from the glass
window on the first floor and he thought he saw her smiling. He smiled back at
her.
He was early as usual and
except the cleaning lady there was no one around. He would have ample time to spend
with her before the other staff came in. He hopped up the steps, two at a time and
walked up behind her. She was still looking out of the window with her back to
him.
‘Hi sweetie, good morning’
he whispered into her ear, turning her around to face him.
She seemed to be smiling at
him, like always. She was wearing a blue satin sleeveless full length gown that
made her look so alluring!
‘See what I have brought for
you today,’ he said as he opened a cardboard box and showed her a pink chiffon
saree. ‘This is my favorite colour, sweetie, and look at the silver lace on the
border; you’ll look more beautiful than ever when you wear this’ he winked. He unfolded
the saree and laid it out on the table for her to see.
‘Why won’t you say anything, don’t you like
it?’ he asked, and then he saw her shy smile and knew she had liked it as much
as he did. So what if she couldn't speak, didn't he always understand the language of her eyes? ‘Let me help you wear
it,’ he said. He drew the curtains on the window and switched on the lights. Then
he slid the blue satin dress off her shoulders, his eyes tightly shut, ‘ I'm not
looking, sweetie, at least not till you tell me to’ he smiled naughtily.
He knew she did not know how to wrap a saree
around herself so he’d have to do that himself too. She watched in awe letting
him expertly wrap the beautiful pink saree around her slender waist. When he
was done, he looked at her, mighty pleased with himself. She looked like a
dream!
He pulled open the curtains
and stood there for some time, holding her hand, watching the world walk by on
the streets below. Suddenly there was a lot of commotion and people were
running helter-skelter on the roads.
‘Wait right here, I’ll just
go check what’s happening’ he told her. But no sooner had he said that, he felt
the ground beneath his legs shake and rumble. And before he realized what was
going on, he saw the glass window crack and break into a thousand pieces. To his
utter horror and shock, he saw her fall out of the window several feet down to
the ground even before he could hold onto her. Like a madman, he flew down the
fight of steps, out of the office building and into the street below.
She lay among the shards of
glass her neck apparently broken by the fall. He gathered her in his arms
weeping like a child oblivious to the crowd gathered in the street, oblivious
to the quake that still continued to shake the earth, oblivious to everything
around him but her. She had been the only one who had loved him
unconditionally, unmindful of the warts on his face, unmindful of his crooked
teeth and unmindful of his bulbous nose.
Even as he wept, he saw his colleagues
standing around him exchanging animated glances, trying to suppress their
smile. Teary eyed, he picked up a stone and threw it at the office signboard
that read ‘NAVRATNA SAREES’. He couldn't bear to work here any more With her
not around, it didn't make sense to come back to this place. He picked up another stone aiming at his colleagues,
but let that drop as they ran away from him.
She may have just been a
mannequin to others, but to him she had been the love of his life. And like those broken pieces of glass, his
heart too had broken into a thousand pieces.
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