He never let me look
into his eyes. I kept trying to read into them ... eyes that were as deep as
the sea, what did they conceal within the waves? I was perhaps looking for some
tangible yet unseen emotion that I sensed from him. Whenever we talked, he never
looked in my eyes. Once I playfully told him “I seem to have caught something
in my eye. Can you please help?” He blew gently in my eye and looked away
before I could look in his eyes.
Whenever we met he
used to talk about his work, his schedules, his family, his aspirations ... But
whenever I asked him about myself he would just lock his words away within
himself. Despite that I enjoyed spending time with him. It was not what we
talked about but rather his company that mattered more to me. At times just
sitting beside someone is quite fulfilling in itself. A conversation then just
becomes a mere accessory to that sense of company.
One evening when we
met near the seashore and walked away our discussions of a mundane daily
routine, I suddenly slipped and fell. He sat down immediately beside me,
touched my ankle and looked into my eyes to ask me “Are you ok? Hurt?”
Yes, finally he
looked in my eyes and so did I. And what I saw lifted me and placed me high
among the stars ... My heart leapt so high that it felt as if I had crossed
oceans in that one single leap. But then it dawned upon me ... his reluctance
to express and confess. Our nameless relation didn’t have any tomorrow to it.
It was beyond a conclusion ... without a future. And with that realisation I
fell in the deep abyss of truth and inevitability.
He now looked away.
But I had already seen what I needed to see. We sat quietly beside each other.
We may not have a tomorrow with each other but we decided to make the best of
today anyway.
