Its simple!
“I want that chocolate” , cried the little boy in a adamant tone to his mother.
“No. Enough chocolates for you already” , she said and started pulling him by his arm , trying to drag him out of the store.
Then it happened.
“Excuse me! ” , a voice echoed from behind.
She turned behind to stare into the smiling face of an elderly gentleman holding a large chocolate in his hand.
“Here you go” , said the elderly man offering the chocolate to the little boy, who immediately took it with a big happy smile on his face.
Her first impulse was to politely refuse the offering made by the elderly man and walk away. Their was a brief pause in the moment wherein out of the corner of her eye, she caught the smiling face of her little boy happy on getting the chocolate and admiring it with a dreamy innocence like quality.
“Thank you!” , she said to the elderly gentleman and walked away dragging her little boy.
A Short Story …
The crumpled piece of paper lay desolate by the side of the road. What was written on it was meaningless, an inference one could make out from its neglected state. It appeared as if the paper had resigned itself to its fate, waiting while standing frozen in time.
A gentle gust of wind lifted the paper in the air. Forced not by the will of its own, the paper rolled on in the air , in a smooth motion, imitating the movement of a free bird. It flew on for a few blocks when the wind turned its direction towards the road where few people were walking to their early morning shift. And it was then that it struck on her face and fell dead on the road.
She frowned. She was already half an hour late to work. Her first impulse was to ignore it and keep walking. But something within her made her resist. On an impulse, she picked up the crumpled piece of paper and slowly unfolded it, not sure what to expect inside. The paper had a big smiley and a short message written in it:
“Keep smiling. Take care.”
She smiled. She wondered why someone would throw away such a beautiful message. But that didn’t matter now to her. Folding the paper neatly , she kept it inside her wallet and happily strolled towards her workplace singing her favourite song.
***This story is dedicated to the elephant.
3000
*This story is a work of fiction as well as a part of some writing experimentation.
It was chilly outside with a cold breeze blowing. Rubbing his hands together to get some warmth, he entered the building stealthily making an effort to avoid the people around him. He sprinted up the flight of stairs to floor two, hoping that she had not already left her apartment. A quick glance at his watch showed the time as eight-thirty giving him a pang of hope as it was not usually before nine that people left for work in that city.
He rang the doorbell twice. Its sharp sound echoed through the gallery disturbing him for a while. A moment later, the door opened and she stood before him with an amused expression on her face.
They both stood silent for a while looking at each other.
“I came to see you” , he said.
“Why?”
“I am leaving this place today. I am returning to my city to continue my business.”
She gave him a quick glance without uttering a word. He looked at her face and couldn’t trace any feeling of emotion. They were left wrapped in an uncomfortable silence.
“I thought we could go together”, he finally uttered.
[Part I - Dreams]
“Come inside” , she said.
He had always been surprised by her unpredictability, her way of dealing things in situations. As he entered inside, she handed him a pair of die.
“Roll it and if you get the total five, I’ll join you”, she said.
Any other person would have been bemused at such a ridiculous suggestion but not him. He knew her. And he knew that it was now his luck casted upon some unknown number on the die that would determine her decision. Something didn’t feel right to him as he felt a sudden jab of uneasiness.
The dies rolled on the floor for quite a long time, giving the impression that they would never cease to move. Then one of the die struck the wall and almost immediately came to a stop showing the number two on its upward face. His heart skipped a beat. He watched her and found that she was calmly looking at the other die which was spinning slowly now almost to a stop. The spinning die rolled on to reveal the face two .. then stumbled on to three .. and in a painfully slow agonising motion, stood there slightly vibrating as if teasing them .. as if it was an ominous power which could twist their fate as per its will.
Time seemed to stop for him at that very moment. Strangely, at that very moment, he came to terms with the reality. And as he came to terms with his own feelings, to his very surprise he found that he didn’t care any more .. whether the die showed up two or three or five or any damn number, it didn’t matter to him any longer.
The die had finally come to a stop, rolling once again just before its motion ceased to reveal the face five. He had failed to pass her test.
They looked at each other in silence. Both understood what the other felt at that very moment. She knew that he had realized the reality of his situation. From a corner of her eye, she had watched him undergoing the transformation as he was watching the spinning die.
He left without saying another word. The door closed behind him with a thud. And in the ensuing silence, a drop of tear rolled down her cheek onto the floor.
[Part II - Fiction]
(… “I thought we could go together”, he finally uttered.)
A pause followed. He sensed her expression changing. Her eyes were as dreamy as they used to be but now they conveyed her feelings. He felt happy. He knew he had done the right thing and would never live to regret it.
In a tearful voice, she replied “I thought you would never ask.”. Two drops of tear rolled down from her eyes.
The train to his town left at seven in the evening. And this time, he was not returning alone.
[Part III - Reality]
(… “I thought we could go together”, he finally uttered.)
“No” , she said.
“Why?”
“You know the answer to this” , she replied staring at him firmly.
He felt confused at that very moment. He thought he didn’t know how she felt and stood there not knowing what to say.
Their was silence again. He turned back and walked down the flight of stairs deciding to call her in the afternoon.
[Conclusion - The Finale]
(3050 AD , fifty years later.)
He stood on the terrace feeling the cool breeze flowing around. It was chilly and dark at this time in the afternoon.
The day reminded him of his haunting memories fifty years ago. At that very moment, he wished .. if only he had realized back then that she didn’t love him anymore .. if only he hadn’t given into false hopes.
And it was at this instance that his heart craved for living his life over once again.
Measuring the summers day – II
“This way Sir” , the guard said pointing to the backstage area.
By now, Victor had calmed himself down quite a bit. He was purposely taking slow, measured steps towards the auctioneer, thinking hard at each step, trying to decide how could he best explain his situation to the auctioneer.
“Well, I could say , very well Sir … in a fit of I-don’t-know-what-foolishness , I called out seven even though I didn’t intend to , and the painting was sold to me thus” , Victor thought.
However, something inside warned him that this is not the right time to follow the ideals of honesty and moral uprightness and he better not come up with such a lame excuse. His exterior calm was getting a bit perturbed now as he couldn’t figure out what to say and so as our Victor approached the auctioneer, his mind was in a state of complete blank.
“Congratulations Sir, very nice choice of painting, I must admit. Its worth a fortune and you rather got it cheap.”, said the person wearing the armani auit and gold rimmed spectacles who was the auctioneer.
“Ah! Well , if its so nice, would you buy it from me?” , thought Victor, almost tempted to say the words out loud.
“er … thanks! but there is a little problem …”, said he.
“I know what you are thinking Sir , the painting being susceptible to damage, how would you possibly take it away? Do not worry Sir, to the least in this regard, as we will ensure the safe delivery of the painting at your address. Also, we have got all our auction items insured against any damage until we deliver them to you safely.”, said the auctioneer.
“Painting … insured … what if it gets damaged on the way … they pay me back the amount … if I could make that happen” , the black angel flying on Victor’s head slowly whispered.
“Damn! I am getting too panicky here. Let me just explain my situation to him. I am sure there’s a way out of this without any trouble”, whispered the white angel cautiously in his ear.
“There’s no way out without getting into the legal trouble, they will sue you as well”, said the black angel.
“Just tell him you can’t afford the painting, plain and simple. Tell the truth.”, said the flying white angel.
“Honesty hardly works now days! You are in deep waters, do as I say and you come out fine”, opposed the black angel.
“You know whats right and whats not , don’t you , Victor?” , softly said the white angel.
“Damn! Get away both of you.” , cried out Victor in a loud voice surprising the auctioneer.
“Is something the matter, Sir” , the auctioneer said in a cautious voice now.
“Ah! Well , its just that …” , he was cut short in mid of his sentence by a resounding sweet voice.
“Hi, I am Sophia” , said she extending a hand towards Victor.
Victor had by now realized what was coming. With a pang of nervousness,he slowly turned his head towards her directly looking in the crystal blue eyes in which he had almost drowned a while ago.With great strength by which large mountains have been moved in the history of mankind, he slowly extended his hand towards her.
“Hi , I am Victor” , said he.
“I have a favour to ask. I am the manager at a local art gallery here and as a part of our annual exhibition show, I would love to have that painting at our gallery. We would like to buy the painting from you”, said she shaking his hand.
For a moment, Victor was stunned. He summed up his life in the past four moments he could so distinctly recollect … being bored , then drowning , landing himself in a soup and finally being pulled out of it , all so unexpectedly. Ofcourse, a part of him was delighted at meeting her again and another part relieved at the feeling that the messy situation he was in could now be resolved. He started thinking about the poetic verse he had figured out and realized to his horror that he had lost it again. His face showed signs of being perplexed as he awkwardly stood silent , trying to remember the verse.
“Well, ofcourse , we could offer you a higher price than seven thousand dollars, if you would not like to sell it” , said Sophia mistakingly assuming Victor’s perplexed face as a sign of his hesitancy to sell the painting.
“No. Seven thousand is just fine. Infact, you could take over from here and get the painting from them”, said Victor in a flash as he sensed that the offer could also slip away any moment. The poetic verse , he decided, could be postponed for later.
“Thanks.” , she said with an enchanting smile.
“Could you wait for me near the exit. I have a word or two to talk to you” , she added in an enigmatic tone.
“Sure thing!” , were the only words Victor could utter, totally dazed by the events of the afternoon.
As she walked away with the auctioneer to settle out the paperwork for the painting, Victor appeared thoughroughly lost and confused. He didn’t know what to make out of the events of the afternoon. He felt as if the past few moments had been a hazy reality over which he had no control. He was a puppet in a drama and someone else seemed to be pulling the strings.
“Well , I’ll just wait at the door for her” , thought Victor.
As he slowly moved towards the door, he tried recollecting that verse again. He had an inkling that he might need the verse for the near future. But as hard as he did try, the verse eluded him.
“Ah! Just when you need it, its not there … It was the setting , the environment that got me the verse … It won’t come back now ” , cried the voices in his head.
He didn’t know the time through which he stood by the door waiting for her, trying to remember the verse and finding a logical explanation of the bizarre sequence of events that had unfolded at the afternoon. He was so much engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t notice her approaching.
“Hey there” , said she with a smile.
“Hey” , said he trying to converse in a normal tone
“Take this and read it when I am not there” , said she enigmatically handing him a folded piece of paper.
Of all the events that had opened up over the afternoon, the last thing that Victor needed was another dose of some kind of cryptic message.
“Well”, he said taking the piece of paper, “I had a question to ask. Why were you looking at me so intensely during the auction?”
“Was I … no, I wasn’t”, said she a bit confused.
“But you were looking at my direction, weren’t you?” , said he
“Yes , I had got a pain in my neck. I was just stretching out a bit”, replied Sophia
Victor felt as if he had been hit by a lightening bolt. Yet, however deeply he might have been affected, he stayed calm and unperturbed. Probably, by now, he had realised that anything normal would be too bizarre an explanation for today. He felt he was in harmony with the surroundings and events and seemed to perfectly accept any not so rational explanations with utmost ease.
“By the way, our exhibition is tomorrow evening. I’ll be there around. Drop in if you find time”, said she giving him her card.
“I have got to rush now and make arrangements for tomorrow. Thanks to you for agreeing to sell us the painting” , added she.
Victor could only produce a weak smile in return. He told her he would try to make to the exhibition tomorrow and meet her.
And so, they exchanged goodbyes and our Victor returned home, thouroughly demolished.
Clutching his forehead, Victor laid down on his home couch. The afternoon had been surreal. But he knew he would meet her tomorrow, talk to her about the events that had occurred from his perspective … and probably ask her out.
“Not such a boring afternoon afterall”, thought he with a smile and was about to slip under the covers for a quick nap when he remembered the unfolded piece of paper she had given him.
Taking out the paper from his pocket, he slowly opened it. He thought he knew what was written inside. As he was about to read it, he felt as if he knew what was coming next. With trembling hands holding the paper, he reluctantly moved his look over the scribblings in the black ink written on it. As he read it, his heart skipped a beat.
On the paper were written the following words:
“Describe it in seven words, when you meet me next!” …
The crystal blue eyes were staring at him from the little piece of paper and Victor felt like he was drowning again.
Measuring the summers day – I
Victor was comfortably seated in the chair inside the big auction hall. His eyes wandered lazily to the podium in front of him where a clean shaven man wearing gold rimmed spectacles and a armani suit was resounding a hammer on his desk. The hammer count had reached two and the eighteenth century painting up for the auction was due to be sold for six-thousand dollars at the next stroke of the hammer.
Victor yawned. He wasn’t particularly interested in this auction stuff. He wondered how on earth could he land at such a dull place on such a lazy sunday afternoon.
“Perhaps I would have been better off had I gone to catch some upcoming movie or just hung out with my friends at their place”, he thought.
He started cursing himself for the lousy idea of visiting the auction hall at the Town Center to kill time. He cursed his friends for not telling him how boring it was and he even cursed God for giving human beings the stupid intelligence to invent such a process as ‘auction’.
“Why do they have to make a big fuss about selling items in such a way. They should just put the items with their price tags on display and let the buyers decide. It would be so less boring that way … and quieter … maybe interesting …”. His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp pain in his neck.
“Ah! Well, God’s way of revenge by giving me a pain in the neck”, he thought. Little did he know that the Mighty power had a sense of sarcasm too. Turning his head towards right to stretch out his neck muscles a bit, he caught sight of a figure sitting two seats beside him. Under normal circumstances, Victor would have ignored the person and turned his head back carrying out his stretching excercise.
Yet, these were not normal circumstances as per Victor’s perceptions and for the following reasons(which he was able to think out later) …
First of all, the face was too strikingly beautiful to be ignored.However, what struck him more was the way in which she was looking at him. Her big blue innocent eyes were transfixed on his face as if penetrating and searching for something. For a moment, Victor felt like a living reflection in her watery eyes. He felt a sense of connection too.(Perhaps both of them were allies united against the common enemy of the boring auction unfolding before them or was it a moment of pure serendipity? For reasons not clear to this day, Victor never could find out why he felt that sense of connection!)
And then a strange thing happened. Victor suddenly felt a sense of drowning. His head was spinning or rather everything around him seemed to be revolving … the auction table , the hammer , the person with the gold rimmed spectacles , other people in the chairs … only she seemed to be fixed in her chair gazing at him with the same intensity as before. “Whats happening?”, Victor thought to himself. In a moment of sheer panic, he squeezed his eyes close and flinched them tightly to come back to senses once again. And when he opened his eyes, he was in for a surprise.
“Do you or do you not?” , she was asking him.
The sun was shining brightly on top of his head. Yet, it was not hot but almost comfortable in that garden. He felt the aroma of the flowers around him which seemed to give him his sense of reality back. “Such a beautiful day and a beautiful place to be in”, he thought.
“Do you or do you not, Victor?” , her voice was a bit louder now.
“Do I or do I not what?” , Victor quipped back and instantly realized how stupid his remark was. Determined not to let the damage go any further, he replied back before she could respond, “Yes, I do dear. I do love you.”
Somehow, Victor could see she was not happy on hearing this. He wondered if that was the right thing to say but then decided to act cool. She was again staring at him with that strong gaze making him wish he had his sunglasses on. There was a moment of awkward silence as both of them looked at each other, the hunter ready to shoot down the target and the prey not knowing what to do.
“Enough , I’ll take charge of the situation and bring it back under control”, Victor thought.(At that very moment, he heard someone inside himself smirking for the pretension of false bravado) . However, a determined man as Victor was, not to be ruffled by internal or external criticisms of his own abilities, he opened his mouth in an attempt to utter something but was quickly snapped off by her voice.
“Describe it in seven words then!” , she seemed to be saying.
“Describe what?”, he foolishly asked back.
“Your love …” , she seemed to be glaring at him in anger now.
Of all the difficult situations Victor had managed to successfully counter in his life, he always had a cue as to how he could bail himself out in those times. But here was a rarity of a mess he was in. He was no poet and certainly not a magician with words and yet he had been asked to describe his love in seven words. He had a grim realization that his whole future depended on the next seven words he would speak.
“Even Shakespeare wouldn’t be able to do it”, he thought.
Realizing that time was running out and he could do with the internal sarcasm later, he began to race his mind around the options he had. He could say “I love you” twice but that would be only six words. “What if I added a ‘and’ , it would be ‘I love you and I love you’ … seven words as demanded” , he thought. However, seven words as they were, they didn’t sound appealing enough to Victor for he had a slim sense of understanding romanticism somewhere deep inside. He decided to keep this option as a backup in the eventuality of finding nothing concrete.
“Shucks! Why seven, why not three or why even a limit to the words?” , the voice within him again cried out frustrated at the unfruitful attempts to resolve such a hopeless situation.
“Damn! I wouldn’t be able to figure this out”, he thought as a few more moments elapsed. He wracked his brains a bit more and just when he was about to give up, he got a faint recollection of a short beautiful verse of a poet expressing his terms of endearment to his lover.
“What was it … O Love! O thy … nopes … it started along the lines of ‘O Mighty love’ … no … it was somehow love being mighty and a teacher and all of this was tied up together … ah! if only I had some more time …”
“Victor!!! Seven words and you can’t even do that.” , her sharp voice sounded almost menacing.
“Seven , right , seven … ” , he repeated after her trying to buy himself more time.
She looked at him with a feeling of disappointment now. She slowly turned her back towards him and started walking away. And it was then he suddenly recalled the entire verse. And to his delight he realized the verse was seven words and so perfect for the situation. He almost felt happy now.
“Wait! I got it … I got It … seven right , seven … I got It, I got it!” , he cried after her moving figure, desperately raising an arm as a signal for her to stop.
“You got it , sure?” , her voice was cloyingly sweet now.
“Yes, I do … I have got it … in seven …” , he said rather stammering.
“Ok. Seven it is then …” , she said with a chuckle.
The crashing of the hammer on the auction table woke Victor up with a jolt. He found himself standing with his left arm raised in the direction of the auction table. The crowd in the hall seemed to be watching him agape with a sense of amusement.
“Congratulations Sir! The painting is yours in seven thousand dollars” , the man in the gold rimmed spectacles doing the auction said to him.
“The auction is closed now for the day. The buyers will be escorted to backstage for payment and taking their purchased items” , the auctioneer announced.
Victor slumped back into his chair with a thud. His first impulse was to look right and catch sight of that woman again , to ensure it was not a dream and everything was alright and he had not been strapped off by seven thousand dollars. He saw her vague figure moving away to the exit amongst the crowd. He wanted to run out too , to catch hold of her , to tell her those seven beautiful words he had so painfully thought out. Yet something told him that the moment had passed away. (And so our great Victor didn’t make an attempt to rush after her)
“Excuse me sir , would you please step this way for the payment” , the heavy voice of a guard snapped his train of thoughts.
Slowly, he stood up and begin to think about the situation he was in. The girl was gone, there was no one to listen to his poetic verse and he had to make a payment of seven thousand dollars which he didn’t have at the moment nor could afford to pay with the savings he had.
“Well , whats more worse , to express yourself in seven words when you are poor at words or to express out seven thousand dollars from thin air when you are poor at your bank balance” , Victor thought and couldn’t help resist a chuckle.
