being there. Part I

And now they were here too. She could see them crawling all over the room. And she felt as many as twenty scrambling on her head. Running down her nose. Some sliding down strands of hair…she searched for a knife so that she could chop her hair off. Then perhaps they would stop crawling over her. But in that tiny room with bars there was nothing except a thread bare cot, a water jug and a blanket. She reached for the water jug and smashed it over her head.

****

He rushed into the room excitedly. “ You made it. You book is topping the charts now. Vikram just called me.” She was bending over something near her table, but as soon as she heard him, she squealed and rushed into his arms.

“ You are joking right? My book, I mean our book…”
“ I always told you it would work right. See now” He grinned
“ But I can ‘t believe it…I just cant”
“ Well I can. I would have not believed it if it hadn’t happened this way”
He smiled wickedly at her astounded face…
“ So…the treat then…are we going out now? Or….”

She screamed and rushed into her bedroom slamming the door after her.

Laughter rang loud.

He was an engineering student and she a student of literature when they first met at crosswords. She was immersed in reading from Daphne du Maurier and did not even hear her mobile ringing. He’d felt annoyed first. How can anyone be so oblivious as to the disturbance? Quite a lot of people had begun to stare at her trying to locate why she wasn’t picking the call.

“ Excuse me, but I think your cell is ringing.”
“ What? oh! Is that mine? I am so sorry. Oh my is everyone staring at me? God! Where is my cell now?”
she began searching her large jute bag with a minimum of hundred pockets frantically.
He took pity on her and snatched the cell from her fingers and gave it to her.
“To think I was holding it. How silly of me. Will you please catch my bag, while I attend the call?

Without waiting for an answer she thrust the bag into his unsuspecting arms and walked out of the store. He stood gaping after her. Feeling angry irritated and amused at her audacity, her silliness and her stupidity. She trooped in with a tear stained face something like half an hour, while he had almost gone to sleep hanging on to the bag.

“ Will you please drop me home? My fiancé just called off our engagement and am not sure I can find my way home alone”

Two strangers they were. But as it happens in all movies, they met by fate and were destined to be together. After about a year of casual calls and some infrequent messaging, they started going out together. She the scatterbrained and he the meticulous, she the effervescent and he the sober, a mix of Bollywood music and Beethoven’s symphonies, Shakespeare and T-square, they got on famously well.

He wanted to build homes for the poor, she wanted to write.