Maybe tomorrow he would feel better and talk to her!

And then there were the Hours! Those never ending hours that eat you up from within slowly. In the dark, silent night, as the clock tick tocked, you lie awake for the Hours to pass and the day to start. But even then you know that there will be those Hours again and then another day will start and that this cycle will continue till the very end. And, whilst those hours go by and you sit there thinking all those odd thoughts, some that make you laugh, some that make you cry and all this while you wait for those irksome Hours to go by. It is with this thought that she sits on the bay window, looking out of the window as she sees the sky light up finally. The colour turning from black to midnight blue then to crimson to yellow and finally the clear blue. She can see that it’s going to be a clear day, sunny but not in a bad way and maybe she will be able to cross the day. May be he will be a little better today and maybe he will talk to her today. Sometimes she thinks she is as insane as people say that she is. Sometimes she feels that they are right about her, that “she isn’t all that there”! She feels the same too. She isn’t normal to love someone so deeply and yet so platonically. She sits back and thinks of the first time she saw him. Ah! Yes she remembers. They were all playing and right there sat this unknown man amongst all those people she knew. Something about him struck her, but she dismissed it without a thought. The beard and those deep dark eyes that seemed to have captured his soul within them. Those gentle, scared and yet scary eyes. He was reading a book, there sitting amongst strangers or so they seemed. She was talking on the phone , she was smoking and waiting to get on to the court when all of a sudden this stranger walked up to her and asked her if he could borrow a cigarette and somehow she just couldn’t say no. There was something about the way he asked. Something about him! Over the next few weeks they spoke and realised they could talk to each other without having to think twice. And, oh the conversations they would have! She felt in an odd way that she was attracted to this man even though she did not like men, but there was something about him. But it wasn’t the attraction that it should’ve been. She felt as if this was someone she wanted to take care off for ever, someone she wanted to love and cherish. He told her a few months later that he was sick and that the schizophrenia was not much he could control. Yes indeed he was conscious of what that meant and was scared that she too might turn her face away from him, just as many had after hearing of this. But somehow she wasn’t scared and she wasn’t disturbed by this declaration. She felt that urge that she had felt in the very beginning of their friendship return two folds stronger... The urge to take care of him and love him! He would often tell her what the voices said to him, but just the gist and she would never ask him questions for she felt it was invading on his privacy, privacy of the parallel world he lived in. No, she wouldn’t want to do that! That wasn’t the right thing to do. She was sure he would tell her what was important and she knew he did. Suddenly she breaks away from this thought of the story of him and looks at the time. Loudly she exclaims “Oh My! Its nearly 7, better get the coffee started and then I have to get ready too!” She lights up a cigarette and walks into the kitchen. While she puts on a fresh pot, her thought drifts to that day when for the first time she got a call about him. Sitting in office trying to wrap up for the day, she was all alone and her phone rang. It was the friend through whom they had met. He had tried to commit suicide. He had been saved but he had no one but her. She rushed to see him but he wouldn’t see her, for he was ashamed that in his fit to get away from the voices he had taken such a drastic step. She forced him to look at her just the way she had forced her way into that room, just the way she has forcibly made friends with him. She made him look at her and told him that it was ok. That it was alright. She wasn’t angry or hurt nor was she disappointed him even though her heart ached. She prayed from that moment on that when he makes the next attempt, he should succeed and his agony of living those Hours when the line between real an imaginary were blurred would end. She prayed in earnest letting go at that very moment her need to hold on to him forever. Maybe today he would feel better and talk to her. Oh she missed him every day and she missed his warm smile and the little excitement that she saw on his face each time she walked up to him. They loved each other like no other could, yet it wasn’t what many believed it to be. She was for him his Delhi where for her he was the only man she could truly love with her heart and yet not feel anything but platonic concern. She stubs her cigarette and walks up to her room, setting out her clothes for the day, she thinks about that time when he was coming after ages to Delhi and how she was waiting at the airport holding her breathe craving for the sight of him for she hadn’t seen him now in years because the doctors said he shouldn’t go and live in a lonely city like Delhi and she had let him go. Oh how she missed him! While she waited for him to come, she was so nervous. A nervousness she couldn’t believe she could’ve ever felt. And while she waited a fear started settling into her mind, maybe he imagined he was coming. What if he doesn’t! What if he just thought he was coming to Delhi and to see his Delhi, all the while she was waiting? And, when he walked out of the doors of the airport she had never felt as good as she felt at that time. He had never thought this tiny little thing would ever hug him that hard. She had started to cry in a mixture of relief and just pure joy of seeing him in front of her, in flesh and bone, hearing his voice. It was a sense of calm that she felt on seeing him there as if something in her life had been missing in all those years that he wasn’t there. As she pats herself dry, she looks at that little box by the side of her bed in which she keeps his letters, each one so carefully preserved for it might be the last one he might write to her ever. He writes beautifully. Oh yes he writes, not types. Those letters that describe everything to her that is happening to him, everything that feels and every sight that he sees, for she is the only one who will understand. Maybe today he would feel better and talk to her. She doesn’t call him often or write to him regularly, because she doesn’t want him to feel bound, but she hurts for him and misses him but she doesn’t want him to feel imprisoned by her concern. She thinks of all those moments that she has spent with him and she thinks of the simple joys of a good cup of coffee and a shared cigarette that they enjoyed together, without the worries of what the world has to say about them and what they feel. She feels perfect when she is with him, for in his eyes she is his Delhi and she is perfect. She does not fear judgement from him for he does not judge her for her decisions nor for her being who she is. He loves her truly for being the person she has been just as she loves him for being the man he is. But their loves for one another people do not understand. They call it many things yet they haven’t been able to decide what it should be termed as. While they are not lovers they are companions. With all this thought running in her head she heads to the kitchen to have a cup of coffee, picking up the phone she dials his number again, but cuts the call even before it connects. Let him call himsell she thinks! Maybe today he would feel better and talk to her. Something tells her he isn’t ok, for he would call or he would write. He hasn’t written to her in long and she misses his beautiful writing and his lovely words, full of awe and wonder. Through his eyes she always sees the beauty of everything he sees and yet he hasn’t written to her in long. She walks into her house at 8 in the night hoping he might have written to her, only to be dismayed by the lack of any letter. She thinks of calling but then doesn’t, she doesn’t want him to feel bound to her. Maybe tomorrow he would feel better and talk to her. And may be the Hours will not be that bad then!