Oh Maria!!!

I was explaining the pythagoras theorm to her. The venue is my interior design class in Ex-In, Bangalore. I was new to the place, first time out of Kerala. Apart from Neeraj, there was not a single person in the class who spoke Malayalam. And for me, all my linguistic skills depended on the limited English words i knew.

Oh. How i wish this girl knew Malayalam, i thought as i struggled to establish the connection between the sides and the hypotenuse of the triangle. My poor command over the British language made the theory look intricate. I desperately sought the help of diagrams to demonstrate the geometry to this confused chick.

Uff. it was terrible. I somehow managed to ring a few bells in her, though my English made sense only to me.

Two days later, in the class. Neeraj was being clumpsy and restless as usual. I feverishly resorted to my seat, watching the other girls and boys howl and blabber around in kannada, Hindi and English and whatever languages they knew, when i heard the sweetest word i've ever heard since i came to this class.

Over my shoulders. Loud out to him, "enthootta Neeraj?" she. In pucca Thrissur slang. OH.MY.GOD!!! I couldn't believe my ears. Only if my astonishment knew its limits. "Anne, stop keeping your mouth open," Neeraj's poking brought me back to senses.

Is this how murderers are created? Only if i had heard this two days before!! Hmm. I would have been jailed for homicide lest she had no that innocent, what-did-i-do smile of hers.

Thats how she became my sweet friend. Maria.

Aneez's, Jithu's, Sithara's, mine..

That was a fine evening. Sun couldn’t be seen because of the huge building that stood immediate outside the window, but an orange hue befell the room. The curtains did not flip. It was dark inside. And pleasant. She sat on her bed like a sage meditating.
The windows media player window on her laptop screen awaited a finger stroke. She took a deep breath. How would it be, my words, life blown into it by her voice?
She clicked the play button. The song. Music raised in a slow pace, Sithara's melodious voice started tiding the room. She closed her eyes.
...Hey rainbow, as the clouds fell like your song, my heart became a timid earthen veena. Are these red evenings getting interwoven and precipitating as mist in my silences?
Ripples glided out of the music Jithu had religiously composed.
...When the white stars smile, my heart becomes the blue moon. Like the dewdrop on a red rose, my heart starts to melt. The line of a song strokes my heart. The sting of a pain strokes my heart.
A lump clogged her throat.
Is this the inside of my soul which I myself had not known?
...The petal of a flower shed on earth like a poem.(Did you) hear the soft midnight song of the river? My dreams fly as the wings of a wind. Like waves (it) searches for shores.
She opened the windows and gazed out. Air breezed over her locks.

Clouds had gone berserk. She stood with unsteady feet, drenched, on the rock with slippery mosses. Small muddy streams drifted underfeet. The wind enveloped her silence with its cold watery locks. A lump clogged her throat. ‘Don’t coax me,’ she mumbled to the rain.

The river flowed flat and shallow. The rocks beneath its bosom were sedimented to form parallel lines. Lichens spread gorgeously on the rocks, artistically, so that it could be taken for bedsheet floral designs. She tried to dip herself wherever it was possible. It was almost like a curlew’s dive, but for the colour and size. That night, shivering from fever, she dreamt of lying supine in water, watching thousand dragon flies fledge across a clear blue sky..

When the first ray of the sun touched the leaves, the rose opened up her outer petal. The dew drop sloped out. A fragrance from her floated west. The caterpillar rose up to the morning hue..

Though an angel, her wings were too weak to fly high and long. She waited for the Noah’s ark, before the flood embraced her rooftop.. The silent waterbed extended to the horizon. Only a dead snake floated by..