Rumi got down from the suburban train, squeezing herself out of the jam packed ladies' compartment.
She was dressed in her habitual pair of jeans, and a sunshine yellow t-shirt that was stained with splotches of fluid from the day's work. She brushed a thick lock of hair that fell on her face, fluttering out of stretch band that gathered her shoulder-length hair in a careless bun.
Twisting her arm, she hoped for her eversilver water bottle from the bottle holder of her backpack. As the sparse remnant of cold water streamed down her throat, she admonished herself for not having refilled her water can before she departed from her workplace for the day.
As she strode down Station Road, her anticipative eyes roved around hoping she'd discover the wounded cow she'd treated a couple days ago..
She'd caught sight of a cow, impaired with a huge abscess in her right hind leg. The cow, with a fraying rope tied loosely around its neck, undeniably, screamed someone's ownership of it.
Did the owner know of this huge, hurting abscess and didn't take a step towards relieving it of the prickly pain—Rumi didn't know.
But after happening upon one such abscess, she couldn't leave the place without towing the cow to her clinic so damned dutifully, to alleviate her. This was not a legally right thing to do when the cow had a owner and her, treating it without the owner's say, but her moral values, and doctor instincts would do her off, if she didn't do it. Right away.
And surprisingly, the cow did cooperate well, when she'd tugged it gently all through the torrid streets of her city, to her clinic. Perhaps, it just wanted to be salved from the pain.
From that day, whenever she walked down to her clinic, or retired home at night, Rumi's eyes, benevolently, scanned the streets for the cow, she'd treated. She now had a greater responsibility of changing the gauze wick she'd packed inside the abscess cavity, if it'd soaked in the what's left of the drainage.
As Rumi lumbered across the street holding her right hand over her spectacled eyes, blinking at the scorching sun, she came up with the same cow resting in the corner of the street, chewing on the cinema poster that it'd ripped off from the wall.
Wiping the single bead of sweat that rolled down her right temple, Rumi dashed across the street and reached the cow.
Planting her hands on her hips, Rumi shot a momentous glare at the creature lying down at her feet, chomping the cinema poster giving out an annoying rustling. She had not the energy to tug an already languished cow up till her clinic, in this sultry weather.
Decided she'd look into it right here, she squatted at the cow's hind limb, to examine how well the abscess's cavity had healed, unmindful of the situation around her.
Just when she'd managed to pluck the wet, pus-soaked gauze out of it, and repack the cavity with a newly sterilized one, distracted by a noisy bike in her closer proximity, she twisted her head around.
Adhithan smiled down at her, perched on his vintage Bullet, and holding down his helmet in the front. "Hi, uhm... Not-So-Rude Girl," he greeted her, as his eyes swayed down to check out the new gauze's tail she was stuffing in.
Rumi's eyes floated over to his thick, curly lock of hair that ruffled at its release from the helmet. And as she averted her gaze to the cow's legs, she replied, "You don't have to change my name just because you're seeing me do nice things."
She'd said that anticipating a witty comeback, but he'd astounded her by quietly watching her, until she finished repacking the wound.
Roused from the ground, Rumi gently shook her legs one by one that'd numbed due to the squatting. She then asked him, "Why are you waiting?"
Adhithan took in a large breath, as if he'd been pulled out of a trance. "I thought I'd offer you a ride home."
Rumi did not oppose. "Right. Thanks. I am exhausted, anyway," she mumbled, walking towards the water pump, waving at him, "come here."
Adhithan followed her towards the water pump, after propping his bike up in its stand.
Rumi washed her hands as he pumped water, mumbling, "It's a wonder that water still comes out of these things."
Unstrapping her backpack, and resting it on his bike's pillion, Rumi took out her Kleenex to wipe her hands. Whilst Adhithan's face formed a very concerned frown at her. "What happened to your dress?" he asked.
Rumi bent down to look at her favorite tee shirt, muttering, "I'd gone attend a labor. Patient needed help due to dystocia—" she paused catching on his thoughtful glare, and explained, "dystocia is a condition that makes labor difficult for large sized calves."
"Oh," he hummed.
***
Rumi had reached home, washed her amniotic fluid blotched t-shirt, and showered.
She was spreading the towel she'd been using to dry her hair, on the clothesline at the back of her house, when Adhithan's baritone voice screaming her name out from the front, flustering her.
"Will you open the door for me, Rude girl?" he sang it with some unknown rhythm, "since you like listening to my singing, I am singing this to you, will you open the door for me, Rude girl?
Rumi sprinted to the door, with her cheeks warming up just like her heart did, at his rhythmical calling.
Brushing the wet tufts of her hair behind her ears, she bolted the door open. Adhithan stood there with a delightful smile, whilst Rumi gushed at him, trying to not pay attention to the warmth in her chest.
"Do you want this whole neighborhood to know that I am a Rude girl?" she reprimanded, holding her narrowed eyes straight at him.
Adhitha's singing that he'd paused for an instant she looked him in his eyes, resumed, "Thank you, Rude girl, for opening the door for me—"
Rumi panicked at his terrible singing, and pulled him by his arm into her house, and shut the door.
"Stop. You don't even have to thank me. It's horrible, really." She feigned a plea.
He did not stop.
"Please stop, and I'd count that as your thankfulness."
He then did.
Rumi sighed in relief, and directed him towards the straw mat rolled out in the corner of her living room, with a couple of fluffy cushions rested against the wall as backrests. "Take your seat, Google boy."
He reached Rumi in three, long strides and held out a stainless steel tiffin box, his fingers wrapped around it.
Rumi lifted her head up to his expressive eyes, from the tiffin box. "What's this?"
"I decided to be nice to you, even though you're not so nice to me," he recited, still offering the tiffin box. "I cooked food for me, and you seemed too exhausted to cook. So I got you some. Take it."
A gentle smile tugged at her mouth, as she took it in her hands. "Thank you, Google boy."
Without another word, Adhithan lumbered to the mat to sit down.
Rumi sat down next to him, and opened the tiffin box.
She inspected the contents of the tiffin box, and looked over at him wistfully. "Hey, tell me the truth. You wanted to annoy the hell out of me, and cooked bitter gourd, with all of your love, didn't you?" she asked, tearing a tiny piece of hot, soft chappati.
Adhithan shook his head with a gruff laugh. "No, Rude girl. It was not intentional. I only had bitter gourd in the fridge and had to go with it."
Carefully picking up a piece of bitter gourd that was well-coated and cooked in masala, with the torn piece of chappati, Rumi poked it in her mouth. And as it melted in her mouth, she relished it with a satisfying hum.
"Not bad," she told him, once she'd finished chewing the last piece of chappati.
Fully engrossed in analysing the pile of books she'd stacked up on the floor, next to the mat. Adhithan asked her, his own doubt. "Hey, do you like Bharathiyar?"
There was a tiny book of poems written by Bharathiyar in his hand, and his eyes were dreamy, and wide.
Rumi took her own time to lick the masala off of her finger tips, as she shot him an irked glare. "Don't you feel silly to ask it when you're actually holding my book in your hands?"
Adhithan perked up at her. "Hey, Rude girl, will you teach me how to read and write Tamil?"
Rumi's brows formed a knot in that frown she had on her face. "Do you say you don't know how to read and write Tamil?"
"Yeah," he agreed, sadly.
Rumi couldn't restrain herself from scowling more. "Do you actually say that you don't know how to read Tamil when you've your name as Adhithan?
Adhithan was the name of her favorite warrior, Prince Adhitha Karikalan from her dearest Ponniyin Selvan. How could anyone have his name and not know Tamil? It made Rumi grow pitiful towards him.
Adhithan nodded, a little pout writhing his lips that reminded her of Google's eyes, somehow.
"My Amma named me Adhithan from her favourite, epic novel," he said. "I didn't even read the translated version hoping I'd learn Tamil someday to read it."
Rumi acquiesced. "Fine, I will teach you."
Adhithan gave her a full-blown grin, and started singing (according to him), "Thank you, Rude girl, for saying yes to teach me. You're a rude girl but a nice girl. So—"
"Ugh. Stop. Stop. Stop, you horrible screamer."
From then on, Adhithan had begun taking up Tamil classes from his Rude girl.
Rumi managed to wrap up her work early in the evenings, so that she could come home and spend some time gibbering with her beloved Google boy.
Whilst Rumi and Adhithan would be engrossed in studying Tamil, Google would be caught up in chewing her stuffed, tiger toy, or spinning around, chasing her own tail, or lying down by the doorstep watching the noisy road.
In a month's time, Adhithan had learned all the letters and Rumi had asked him to write a slip test, dictating, tiny, three letter words.
A flimsy smile sitting on her lips, she scribbled his score with a black sketch pen on his test paper.
Shutting her door with a thud, she exited her house to give him his test paper, cheerfully. He'd been excited to write his first dictation test, and he'd be ecstatic if he learned he'd scored a seventeen on twenty.
Rumi's sprint stopped sharp at Adhithan's gates the moment she saw a black, Rolls Royce Phantom-8 parked, almost blocking the lane; and a middle aged man standing with brooding expressions marred on his face, right at the entrance of his living room.
Rumi's gaze reluctantly switched over to Adhithan, who was standing with a grave face, staring aimlessly at his cement floor. Google was eagerly nibbling on the new man's pants, to which his face turned more stony.
Just when she decided she'd leave the place without proceeding in, Adhithan's earnest voice drifted to her.
"Rumi."
It was the first time he'd called her by her name, and Rumi, certainly, wasn't in the position to bask in it. Clutching the part of her t-shirt over her chest, she turned around.
Adhithan was nearing her with his arms tenderly huddled around Google.
"Let her be with you for sometime, please." He handed over Google in Rumi's arms.
Rumi, stuck in some daze, nodded at him.
Adhithan looked at her eyes, intently, and said, "I will come, meet you in sometime."
Rumi muttered an okay, before she left the place with an overcast of random thoughts in her head.
