Twenty Rupees

I still don’t know why we decided to take that walk.


It wasn’t rainy. It wasn’t winter. There is no winter here anyway. It wasn’t the calm, cold October month. It was hot, sultry and sweaty. Summer making its obvious presence felt on our armpits, and our foreheads, where little beads of perspiration pondered sliding down our noses.


Am not sure if we talked that day. I remember sly glances and colour on cheeks. Yellow dupatta and a bright green slawar kameez, a white tee and Bata chappals. But nothing of conversations. Funny how a few days ago when friendship was the term that had defined our relationship, words would never stop, tumbling over each other in their rush.


But now friendship was lost. And in the first walk together to nowhere, there was something else. And we were smiling all the while.


It was she who wanted the watermelon. I watched her as she ate. It was as if even watermelons loved her. Or perhaps I was too lost to really think of the careless way in which she bit into the pinkness of the melon.


Two brown seeds were sticking to somewhere between the tiny crook where the lip starts and what you would perhaps refer to as the chin. I looked at them (and her). My hand rose hesitantly, fingers wanting to brush the seeds off, wondering how it would be to feel her skin.

My hand must have just begun the sojourn to her face.


“20 roopa chetta” (that will be 20 Rs.)


She brushed the seeds away herself. My hands found two ten rupee notes in my pocket.