Dew Drops

It had been raining heavily for nearly two days before I got off my bus in Nainital. The sky was puffed up with cotton clouds wanting to shed rain, and the lake seemed to flawlessly bounce these clouds off, ensuring the pristine clouds didn’t break. I could still feel a light drizzle though, and the street shined bright covered with the droplets, which were like pearls all over the roads, in every nook and every god-forsaken corner I could see.

I went to my favorite place in my city — a cafe near the opposite end of the lake, as it was the only place I would find solace and solitude which would help pull some words out of me and kill my writer’s block. I sat there on my favorite table on the balcony, ordered an espresso and started to brood over the best panoramic and scenic vista of the lake one could get in this town. I sat and for a moment lost myself over the view, and I found myself not being in this world but flying over the lake like a ghost, invisible to the brooding eyes of everyone, until the waiter came and brought me back to the sudden realization of the great truth that my coffee was there on my table. But despite traveling for hours to reach there, I couldn’t get anything out of me — no sentences, no phrases, no words. I just sat there with a paperback of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and sipped my cup of coffee, and started to dream all over again, until the feeling of presence of someone else pulled me back.

That’s when I saw her entering the cafe and ordering at the counter. She wore a blue top and a pair of tight black jeans that were pleasing to the eyes and carried a small brown satchel. She had big dark eyes that twinkle just like the sunlight reflecting off a lake, and her gait was halting like there’s something wrong; she was almost walking right but there was something out of sync. Perhaps one leg was stopping a little short or maybe going long, it was so hard to tell. Or perhaps time for me started to roll slowly as with every step she took, the distance between us shrinked and she seemed to be trapping me in an invisible cage from which I could have broken out but, again, would I have wanted to? When she turned and smiled all thoughts of inquiry fled, she was conventionally beautiful, and to me she was simply haunting.

She sat inside the cafe in the corner, cross legged, near the huge glass pane of a wall. Her coffee came in a second, and she looked outside the glass-pane, sipping her cup of coffee. I could see her brooding over the lake too because that’s what solitude and nature does to us — it realizes how feeble we are in its cusps. Or how the invention of coffee is.

With black hair of wool and her head held high, she waltzed on with an effortless saunter. Her eyes scanned the room with determination in search of something when her eyes met mine she smiled. So beautiful it was like the stars themselves, decided to rest behind the soft cushion of her lips.

I didn’t want to be guilty. Afterall I was a no-one and on a journey of a lifetime. I thought of what I had to say to her, picked up my stuff and went over to her table and said, “So, what’s your story?”

“Sorry?”, she said innocently.

“I saw you sitting here lonely, and people don’t usually come to such beautiful places in a city all alone unless, of course, they are beat-up, or are poets, but not beautiful like you.”

“So you don’t think poets can be beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Beautiful people don’t feel a need to express beauty through words”, I smirked.

“So you were sitting there, thinking of something nice to say to me all the while”, she smiled.

“Guilty as charged”

She giggled a bit and asked “So, what’s your story?”

“I asked you that first!”

“I’ll tell you after hearing yours”

“Okay. I travel and I write. I’m working on a book and this is one of my favorite places to think about what to write.”

“What’s the theme of your book?”

“It deals with after-life mainly.”

“Nice. And you’ve been traveling all the while?”

“Yeah. I’m on an excursion to cruise through all of the twenty-eight states at once and experience things and let them inspire me to write.”

“How many states have you been through till now?”

“Thirteen. This is my fourteenth. I started at Haridwar, then went to Rishikesh, and now here I am, talking to you.”

“And probably hitting the edge of a cliff here.”

“With a sheer intention of jumping off this cliff.”

There was a momentary silence and we just sat there staring at each other and sipping coffee when she broke the silence by telling her name.

“Myra”, she said and pulled forward her hand. “Myra”, the very sound of that name without any syllables in her voice brimmed with life and rhythmed with the soft jazz playing in the cafe. “Myra”, the very name that attracted me and I could feel myself getting lost in the thought of it, pulling every inch of my soul towards it.

We talked about the weather and the rains when I interrupted with “You haven’t told me your end of story.”

“I’m just staying at my friend’s for the weekend. I’m here to escape the city life for a day or two, you know.”

“Yeah, I get that. So what do you think of doing now, after the coffee?”, I said as I took the last sip of my coffee.

“Don’t know”, she replied. “I’ve a train to catch at night and till then I’m just looking to trapeze the city, maybe shop a bit, and won’t mind finding someone to carry my shopping bags.”

“Happily”, said I. We paid the bill but she insisted on paying her end’s which she was so adamantly did.

We went outside the cafe and walked along the road near the lake. There was a cool breeze blowing and the whole city was covered in clouds, but every now and then, the sun shone brightly over the lake, with its rays slithering through the clouds and leaving the sky shining like it was made up of wools of gold and in those clouds I saw the image of a God with its hand reaching out towards us, as if holding us and the whole world in it and caressing us, loving us, caring for us, but we, the sunlight, stabbing Him and cutting him to pieces, only to eventually let us expose to the wrath of mankind.

The sunlight fell on her face and made her skin glow like the early snow of winters, bright like fire and that falls on land to eventually raise the heat and tempts us to adore nature. It was hard for me to get my eyes away from her.

“So, what are you doing with your life?”, I asked her. I love asking everyone this question; it lets me insight on how the people see the world and how the world perceives them, for every person is a story waiting to be unfurled and every girl is a mystery to be solved.

“I’m majoring in Psychology and I don’t know what to do with my life next.”

“Everything is almost better than being a writer though.”

“Seriously!?”, she exclaimed. “Once you get a good book published, you guys get to live life. You travel and write, you create worlds, stories and people like us are just tied to your figments of imaginations.”

“But hardly that many writers make it through”, I replied. “Oh, but that sentence you said was quite favorably my favorite chain of words in the English language, every writer’s pleasure points.”

“So, you are in love with yourself”, she snapped back at me.

“If you are under the impression that I’m in love myself, then it’s quite possible you are higher than me right now.”

She chuckled, and we talked about our lives — our birth places, our childhood, our school days, our college life, and in the midst of these talks, we reached the market.

If there is any place in any city where you would want to catch a glimpse of how the people are, it’s in these markets. There are people like me there, observing others, figuring out their stories; then there are the riches, who, perhaps, live out their lives pretending to be someone else who everyone would look at with awe; then there are people who want to be part of someone else’s stories, who seek them and waste their lives chasing them.

The market was in a narrow street, made more like galleries, shaded by blue and yellow long sheets of plastic that gave the street a look of another dimension, quite distinct from the calmness of the lake-city; on the sides were the stalls covered with clothes for all seasons, and candles, and cologne — the whole street smelled of them, a sweet summer aura.

She tried on different sweaters — yellow, maroon, red, green, any color I could’ve possibly thought of, and of all types — closed neck, high neck, deep cut, and I was already regretting it, and sometimes even whined like a poor child. She enjoyed this and her smile kept me leaping forward, crawling to her. Finally, after an hour and a half, she settled on one; it was a red sweater with yellow and green stripes with a deep cut neck and no buttons. She looked amazing in it and the redness only amplified the mad flames of her eyes, and I couldn’t have thought of anything more invigorating than those eyes.

And so the evening was setting in and she had to go back to her friend’s, pack her stuff and catch the midnight train back to her home. And so we walked, for maybe the last time together, near the lake, and to the steps that led to the water. We sat there and witnessed the clouds touch the lake, consume all of the boats on it, and it once again started to rain, but lightly. She asked me to be there with her and get a bit drench in that rain before we had to part. I sat there and we both looked at the lake, hardly visible then. I held her hand and she turned her head to look at mine, and I just kept on staring at her eyes.

“I thought you were going to kiss me”, she said.

“Wow. That’s what I was thinking too”, and I leaned forward to kiss her.

She put her forefinger on my lips and said, “Maybe next time Mr. Everywhereist; possibly when you end your travels.”

“Travel will never end because I’ve fallen in love with the road.”

“But it’ll lead to me, to us, if your road wants to.”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

And we laughed. I moved closer to her and held her hand, never wanting to let it go; and just sat there on those stairs, staring at the mountains, the lake and the clouds right above it, and it was in that moment, I thought, how I could end my travels — with her in this very place, on those stairs and on the same day of the same month, but maybe the sun would shine brighter than before or maybe it would rain harder than ever, but she would be beside me and we would be together, and this time our lips would touch each other’s and I would find a heart to rest mine in.

“You know what”, she broke, and I realized that she would have to leave me in a minute or two.

“What?”, I said.

“My side of story, .why I’m here.”

“You already told me.”

“No. That was not completely true. That was more of my version of hiding the real reason for me being here.”

“So, tell me, I’m all ears.”

“I’d never seen my father. He left us the day I was born, ran away with his girlfriend. Mom knew he was cheating on her the whole time, but some part of her wanted to hear another story. So when I got to college, I started to find out more about him. He was a hockey player and played in Nainital many times. So I was able to track his location, and came here in the hope that he would want to be beside my mother and me in her last time. She has cancer.”

“Sorry to hear that”, I said, and there fell a tear out of her eyes, those very eyes that moments ago burned with mad flames.

“I went to his place, knocked on his door, and there he was right in front of me. I knew it was him because — I’d seen his photos. He had aged but the eyes were still the same. I told him the story and he just stood there, unmoved, and uttered ‘I don’t know you and your mother. I was never married before’ and slammed the door right in front of me.”

More tears followed and I rubbed them away with my finger. She really didn’t know how beautiful she looked even in pain; maybe pain adds multitudes of luster, or maybe pain attracts others because stories are what we lust for afterall.

“You don’t need to waste them for those who won’t waste them for you”, I consoled her, and showed her a tear I picked up from her cheeks and was still a perfect drop.

“You see — things and people too, are just like these drops. You hold them, they are perfect. But if you hinder them, they break, and there we are, left alone, but they, those drops, will mix with the water beneath you and find another drop to mix with.”

She hugged me and I caressed her. I wanted to stay in that moment, in that warmth of her body in the lake city.

She stood up, and said “I need to leave.”

I nodded. It is at moments like these I fall short of words.

“So, when are we going to meet next?”, she questioned.

“We’ll see. The world is a short place. We have the internet.”

And she backed off, still holding my hand, looking right into my eyes, and her fingers slowly slipped out of my grip, and she looked at me for one final time before she turned and went along that path. And there I was, all alone again, with the girl I started to like going in the opposite direction of the road and I just stood there, watching her till she turned to a minute speckle and disappeared into the void of nothingness. The downpour got heavy and I got drenched, and if there were tears, for I don’t know, the rain hid them and washed them away to seep into the lake of the lake-city, making me and her a part of its history.

I rushed to the bus station and hailed a cab to take me back. It was now raining heavier than before and I wondered how and what Myra might be doing. I wondered how beautiful she would be looking, getting drenched in that heavy rain.

I pulled the mirror down and let the drops of the rain fall on my face like crystals from the furiously dark sky that spoke volumes of love, and let the petrichor vitalize me. I let the cool breeze blow through my hairs, whirling and twitching them with its motion, and let them land on my face, calming me, invigorating me with the every wisps of it, and as it slithered passed me, it seemed to tell me “Go on. Go on, son. That’s the road to heaven. Go on and don’t look back”; and I opened my eyes and saw the reddening sun breaking the jail of the clouds and it’s monolith ray pointed straight at my face, and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, alone, haunted and tired with travel, in a cab I’d never been before, hearing the hiss of the wind outside, the rain drops bettering the roof of the car, and I looked at all the clouds blanketing the mountains and the road, and me slicing right through them, I really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.

I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. And so when the sun reddened the whole sky cushioned with clouds, and I sat there in my cab watching the long, long skies over whole of the North and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the Ganges, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and of the plains I know where the children are crying of hunger and they let them cry. And tonight the stars will be out, the evening star drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the alluvial lands, and the twilight which is just before the complete night that blesses the Earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and takes all the melancholy within it, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody beside the forlorn rags of growing old.

I will be leaving nothing behind me and everything and every place lay ahead of me, but I still thought of Myra, I even thought of her father who she could never find, and I thought of Myra and I thought of Myra.