On a romantic wind

I knew the day I saw her. I knew that she was made for me. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen and deep down in my fumbling heart, I knew that she acknowledged my intention.

I met her during the breakfast of 18^th of April while we was hastily slumbering over the food at the buffet. I had all the time in the world to observe her, and to feel my heart overpowering me in the covertness of her beauty. I had not yet decided how I would introduce myself to her, but that I knew, if I didn’t, I would never forgive myself. As the old saying goes, “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all”.

“May I join you?” I asked with timid shyness.

“Sure”, came the reply.

“Normally I would start the conversation by introducing myself and then getting to know you, but today, I cannot do that”.

“Why not?”

“I never did have this feeling, which is strange but also nice which overpowers me when I see you. I think you are the most beautiful women I have ever met and I would really love to be your friend”.

“Are you drunk?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“I think you are crazy”

“Why so?”

“You realise what you said about a minute ago, that I am most beautiful and everything, I have never heard that sort of thing. Is it supposed to romantic and stuff?”

“I don’t know, it’s your call?”

“Would you like to hear a joke” I asked as was my idea to save a situation from going bad.

“With great power comes great difficulty in factorizing the polynomial” bloated my mouth. As always, I knew she wouldn’t understand me. But anyways, she laughed.

“Hello, I am a mathematician, you are so beautiful, you must be a biologist “chuckled I.

And she laughed. And it was so beautiful that I could have given everything to just watch her like that.

And so our friendship began. We met every day at the breakfast, dinner and lunch. I told her my dreams during breakfast and my work during lunch and my stories and jokes during the dinner, not necessarily in the same order every day. She started liking me or so I would like to belief.

One day I invited her to my office to have a look at my cabin and see my work on “Theory of Elliptical Forms” coz that’s the only thing I knew. And then she talked about her work. Being a young assistant professor of 23 obviously have some perks and coming from grad school ,I still had some adventure left in me.

“Do you drink, I asked”.

“Occasionally”.

“Well, would you like to have wine with me”?

“Errrrrr...”

“It is 1990 edition straight from Bordeaux in France”.

“Sure, I would give a try”.

“Want an exotic place to add to the backdrop”

“Sure, why not”.

And so I took her to top floor of the building I used to work in, which was practically empty with windy weather and couple of pigeons hanging around. It was not the greatest location on earth but given the panoramic view of the lake and the hills, it sure added to the beauty of the backdrop. Taking out the two glasses I usually used to store in my cabinet, I popped open the red wine and poured two glasses out of it. Taking out the cork was hell of a trouble and since I took it out all by myself, I have started believing in god.

“Cheers, I said”.

“What for”?

“Our new friendship”

“Oh, ok!”

And then I had the most amazing time of my life, drinking wine with the lady of my dreams and pondering in her dark crystal eyes in which I dived every now and then to reach new depths, to find new treasure every time, to remind me that there was a purpose of existence.

We emptied the bottle in no time. And the last few drops were squeezed by her parched throat.

“Want to have some adventure?”

“Sure”.

“Is this the only word you know to speak “Sure” “?

“Sure” “Oh I am sorry, hell, no, it’s just that you asked all the questions and I answer them in agreement. So yes, I would like to have some adventure”.

I pondered and replied “In my college days, I used to be against the notion of authority and hence I used to do all sorts of crazy stuff to oppose the administration. Me and my friends used to leave whisky bottles in front of the Deans office. And since they could not trace them back to us, we always used to have the last laugh.”

“Where are you going with this? “She asked anxiously.

“How about we drop this bottle from the 6^th floor and as you can see, it will land straight in front of the entrance of college and the administration would of course be offended. Isn’t that something cool to do?”

“What if it hits someone?”

“Come on! Its 5 pm, everybody leaves at 6 .nobody is around and they will never find out”

“Eh..Ok” said she in a very low tone.

“C’mon, it’s not a big deal. Haven’t you had any adventures in college”?

And looking at the right spot with the right precision, I let the bottle relieve my hands. Speaking of physics, it would land at the surface after 2.76 seconds (as I mentally calculated) of course, not taking into account the air resistance which must be quite huge up here.

Manilal was the errand boy who used to get us our reimbursements, Xeroxes and stationary stuff from the store. He was talking on his cell, maybe to his wife, who was terminally ill due to breast cancer or maybe to his only son, Sonu who was studying in the 8^th standard in the local municipal school. Manilal got out from the lift and started marching towards the entrance and as he reached the mattress in front of the entrance, a loud smashing sound came along with the scream.

Manilal was dead.

My face turned from blushing red to ghost white as I watched the whole seen from above. Divya was too traumatized to scream, let alone speaking. My body was paralysed, I could not move. My hands were frozen and my mind refused to be believe what happened. While I was looking at the whole scene, and as the shout came out from Manilal, the bus driver looked up (to find the source of bottle) and saw me. Obviously, he could not recognise me from that height but he knew someone was there. And I was turning to my sense, the driver was coming to the 6^th floor. I knew the basic advice of my father, not to panic in dangerous situation. Divya was still like a corpse and she had tears in her eyes and I knew she was never going to forgive me. But that was not the important question. We had to save ourselves in the limited time we had.

I came to my panicked senses and supported Divya by her shoulders to the lift. There were two lifts and one was coming to the 6^th floor. It was on the 3^rd floor and lifts pretty sure move fast. The other lift was on the 3^rd floor as well.

“You are going to get both of us in jail, you killed a man, you murderer” said Divya sobbing and she knew that the moment of danger was near as the lift was treading up floor by floor. We took to the stairs and ran down the three floors in no time (I was pushing Divya while she was sobbing), pushed the lift button, and I could hear the lift opening on the 6^th floor by the sound of it. As the lift opened and we went inside it, the driver was coming by the stairs. I pushed the ground floor button, reached the basement in 3 seconds, 1 second to open the gate, opened my Santro which used to normally parked near the terminal pillar and us, me and Divya, smuggled inside it in no time. We sat laid back in the Santro in the backseat with our heads lowered and car motionless. As Divya smuggled into my arms, she must have hated me the most but she had no choice. The driver did come into the basement, as I could see from the side-view mirror of the car.

Driver stood there looking for sign of motion as to determine if the culprits ever came this side. I stopped breathing and looked Divya into the eyes to motion her to stop crying. If there was ever a real emotion in me, it was at that moment when my eyes were filled with fear, trauma, kindness, and apology all towards one women. As the minute passed, the driver went back to get help for the dead man. We laid there for another ten minutes without any exchange of words, without any crying and without the heart to believe what I had done. I came to my senses and we went back to my office to prove the point that we did not know whatever happened. That day, I took the rest of the wine glasses from my office to home and destroyed them and also destroyed all my wine bottles. I knew in my heart, as did she, that we were well past comprehension of each other and must cease to meet, which happened eventually.

I could never forget that incident. Manilal had a family to support and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was so frustrated with myself, that here I am writing this confession, while I stand on the 6^th floor balcony. Divya, please forgive me. My will has been made to transfer all my money to Manilal’s wife.

And now I must say goodbye.

(Whistling sound of wind followed by a loud thump).