“What would you have, uncle and aunty?”, asked a young boy wearing a turban and dressed in a yellow Kurti on white pants. Raftaar and Ishitha took the last seats in the Daaba as soon as they walked in.
“Aunty!”, exclaimed Ishitha as Raftaar too exclaimed,” Uncle!”, in chorus.
“Arey! We are young. Bhai bhabhi bulao(address us as your elder brother and elder brother's wife)”, corrected Raftaar. The waiter smiled and nodded. While he apologized, Ishitha shrugged at Raftaar. “Why bhabhi?”, she argued. Raftaar shrank his eyes and caught his ears as Ishitha was engrossed in raising her eyebrows.
“Naughty creepy guy!”, chuckled she. He closed his eyes and chuckled along.
“So, what are you planning to eat?”, asked Raftaar.
“Chapati!”, ordered Ishitha. The waiter nodded as he wrote it down in his notebook.
“At least ask what’s there no?”, suggested Raftaar. Ishitha turned away.
He shrugged. “Would you like noodles, Bhai?”, offered the waiter. “Today’s special-Chinese vegetable noodles”, emphasized he. Raftaar agreed after which the waiter walked away.
“Are you serious, dude?”, asked Ishitha. “Our friend is in the hospital and you are acting as if we have come on a picnic.”
“Why us when her Alok saar is there with her?”, questioned he.
“What do you mean? We are her friends…”
May it be a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a couple of years, or even throughout one's life, relishing the most beautiful feeling on Earth-the love, it still matters.
While most couples are almost near the silver jubilee of their wedding anniversary, Alok and Nisha are just about to begin their love life!
Love at any age is love. Why not a middle-aged love story?!
“Hahaha! Oh, Ishitha Ji, we are visiting her just for our self-satisfaction and her formality. Hence on, that's all. Their love life has started. Remember that we are just friends with the lovely couple while the two in question are lovers-beyond friends.”
“No way, that's not fair. So, you mean Nisha isn’t your friend anymore?”
While the waiter brought the orders to the table, Raftaar nodded at Ishitha. He sipped his noodles with the steel fork.
“Crazy and creepy man you are!”, commented Ishitha. He chuckled again as she too began to hog her chapatis, round in shape.
“Would you like to have a drink like juice or something, bhai, bhaabhi?”, asked the waiter, rolling his eyeballs from Raftaar to Ishitha and vice-versa.
“Mango juice?”, enquired Ishitha, in chorus with Raftaar, “Musk melon?” The waiter noted down again and left.
“Yes, Nisha will continue to be my friend”, responded Raftaar. He continued,” Whatever it is, love is the first priority after it knocks on one’s lonely doors. After the entry of love, friends must maintain a decent distance-its a rather better choice. It's Alisha’s life that let them enjoy it. What will we singles go there and do?...”
“I seriously don’t get you at times like this one time, dude. Do you mean we are disturbing Alisha?”, cross-questioned Ishitha. “No, but still it won’t be good to keep closer ties with them…”, clarified Raftaar at which Ishitha put her finger on her lip. Raftaar folded his hands and nodded like a servant to his landlord!
As they sipped their glasses of juice, Ishitha’s eyes went over his empty plate with a noodle or two stuck here and there.
He shrugged, enquiring like a hospitable host serving his relatives, “Do you need something else?”
She shook her head. “Thanks for your care, though.”
“Oh come on, Ji! We are friends. No thank you!”
She smiled.
“I was observing something else”, began Ishitha, as they headed towards the washbasins a few steps behind them. “Both of us ate. Hardly did we order something common! Quite contradictory to what's shown in the movies when a man and a woman dining outside.”
Raftaar laughed as they returned to their seats. “Bhai, your bill”, informed the waiter, leaving a paper on their small circular table on either side of which was a wooden stool.
“Ishitha Ji, food is a minuscule matter. Yes, you were right. As you observed, we didn’t order any common food.” He waved his hands in either direction. He continued, “However, such big matter-our lives are common, Ji. Both of us never married to date! What a coincidence!” Ishitha grinned at him who couldn’t take his eyes off hers.
He took out a five hundred-rupee note. “Hey no! Let me pay!”, volunteered Ishitha. Raftaar shook his head as he handed over the currency note to the waiter who, in a couple of moments, returned the change too!
“Fine. No debts! I will pay my part right away!”, insisted Ishitha, opening her handbag. Raftaar chuckled. “I had a plate of chapati and mango juice...So,”, calculated she, handing over only a hundred rupee note to him. “Oh, Ishitha Ji! But why?”, he demanded. “Isn’t the fare divided by two when two eat out together?”
“Sorry, dude. I’m particular about all of this. I hope you don’t mind!”, confessed she, leaving the note. “Your noodles contributed to a larger portion of the bill”, grumbled she, finding her way outside. He sighed, looking at the cool lady walking away just like that! He smiled, wondering, “But whatever, she is unique.” He gazed at his table. He moved his fingers, grumbling, “By two, right? This was like one-to-one…Who shares the bill this way? Sweet weirdo!...”
“Dude, isn’t it time already? Come let's go. What are you doing inside yet?”, screamed Ishitha, with the beam of the only giant star of the morning enlightening her fair face.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, Dr.Alok took out a small box with a green lid. He grabbed an apple or two from inside his bag. He chopped it to prepare smaller pieces. He raised his right fist to wipe the drops of sweat rolling down his forehead. Nisha blushed, wondering, “Aww! So sweet of you, saar. You care a lot for me. You love me more than what I had imagined in my dreamy thoughts despite your refusal of my proposal back then.” She observed his left fingers moving carefully away as the blade of the sharp knife neared them.
He filled the snack box with the chopped pieces. They blushed as he fed her apples. She suddenly caught his hand.
“Fuck! Don’t you like apples too?”, asked he. She chuckled, refusing, “No, that's not the matter. Wait, you have been feeding me lunch all this while? Did you eat something in the first place?”
“Yes yes. Sandhya aunty cooked chapatis and rice for all of us, don’t worry”, he consoled her. As he neared the bite of the apple, she stopped him again. While he shrugged, she requested, “Alok saar, I feel awkward eating alone. Can you accompany me?”
“Sexy! What are you talking, medam?”, he chuckled. She shrank her eyes. He continued, “I will accompany you for the entire lifetime. Why not for such a small matter, medam?” She smiled and grabbed a bite from the box to feed him. He fed her a bite, she fed another to him and the pattern repeated until they emptied the box.
All of a sudden, tears accumulated in his eyes. She narrowed down her smile. She extended her tongue out to near his face. She licked his tears. “What are you doing?”, enquired he, in his meek and hesitant voice. “What’s wrong with you, saar? Why are you crying?”, she asked, resting his cheeks in her palms.
He swallowed his tears. He cried at her, “It looks like I am looking after my pregnant wife. But, in reality, everything is already over…”
“What do you mean? What’s over?”, Nisha interrupted him. She highlighted, “Alok beta is here for us, right? He will care for us more than what our biological son or daughter would have if at all we had one.” He smiled and nodded. They hugged each other only to soak their attire with tears. “I love you, Nisha medam”, added he.
Son Alok sighed from the entrance. He closed the door behind him as he walked away. “Mamma and Dr.Alok, I love both of you very much”, thought he, sitting and leaning back on the silver-colored seats in the corridor.
“You gave a wonderful life to me, an orphan. I am happier than I would have ever dreamt of in the orphanage. Your thought holds good with me as well. Even if I had lived along with my biological family,... ” He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. He concluded, “I wouldn’t have been this happy. You gave me all the freedom and the motherly love that I always longed for, sitting in the orphanage.”
He was interrupted by his phone vibrating in his pockets. He swallowed his tears as he grabbed it out. ‘Tanya’, the screen read in bold white on a light blue background.
“Loser! Loser!”, she screamed, from the other end, as soon as he accepted her call. “Hey! What is your problem?”, asked he, walking towards the stairs. As he descended, she informed, “Shortest distance in the graph was two and not five.”
She stood on the lawn, in front of the CSE block of their college. She laughed her heart out. She looked beautiful in a peach Kurti on dark blue jeans. Her bestie Ranveer laughed along, staring at her boobs, as she looked away and was busy pulling her competitor’s legs, over the phone,” Mihir and Sooraj were full on that you will top the internal. Hahaha! My foot! You got a forty-eight due to your silly mistake. I scored forty nine-the highest!Woohoo!”
“So what?”, asked Alok beta, heading inside the canteen. He tapped on the menu. The chef, with the shower cap on his head, nodded. He, at once, offered him a tiny bottle of coke from the refrigerator.
“Is he out of his mind? I scored more than him. Is this indeed his reaction?“, Tanya whispered to Ranveer who shifted his eyes away from her waist. He shrugged.
“Should I gift you a Mercedez-Benz car? If you are interested, you go and party, stick posters in every street of Delhi, and yell on the roads that you are smarter than me…”, commented Alok beta, ignoring her discouragement, as he took his seat at a four-seater table.
Tanya laughed again.
“Arey Ranveer beta! Control yourself. If she catches you, your dreams will go to the bin at the end of the street. Patience! Patience!”, he advised himself, as he massaged his beard along, staring at her buttocks.
Tanya challenged Alok, “Oh gosh! Looks like you just can’t digest the fact that I won the bet. Hahaha! Look at the words you have been pouring out. Crazy young topper guy….”
“Shut up!”, shouted Alok, hitting the soft drink bottle hard on the table. Tanya shrugged, as he challenged her, “You might have scored better than me for once. But, you can’t have a more loving family than mine. My mamma and her saar will be the best parents in the world although they can’t be biological parents anymore. Get lost!”
“Hey! What are you up to? Why are you bringing in our families suddenly? What was I talking to you and what are you speaking about? Is everything okay?...”, she enquired; the chime of topping faded away from her face.
“Bye!”, said young Alok, hanging up.
“Wait!”, exclaimed Tanya, a moment after he hung up.
As she had put their call on the loudspeaker, Ranveer too could hear Alok completely. He wondered, “Why is Alok mad? This has always been a normal conversation between the two loggerheads after every internal exam. Why such a bizarre reaction now? Above all, why was he sharing such sensitive personal matters with her? Don’t even look at her, Alok. Tanya is my item. Don't you even dream of her.”
He was about to put his arms on her shoulders when she walked away, grumbling about her classmate’s ridiculous expression.
“Ranveer beta! Do something otherwise, she will lapse out of your hands. You will lose the yummy fish fry”, he warned himself, continuing to stare at her, gnashing his teeth along.
Alas! How could Tanya's best friend himself have such evil eyes on her? Who will save her? Are Raftaar and Ishitha getting a little closer?
Dear readers,
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