A clear blue sky

I don't remember how many lines we have actually drawn on our plates with our wet hands, sitting there silently on the table, smiling to ourselves at our own private jokes. Once in a while, we look up, catch eachother's glance, smile and ask ourselves questions whose answers we already know.

"Want some more rice?"

"No. I am fine"

and our lips get sealed again. We look around for trains of thought that would hit us on its own without requiring even a trivial effort from our side as if determined that we shall not break this precious silence with a word uttered for the sake of it. The candles on the table and on the fridge are dying a slow death, tears of wax streaming from their eyes. As I stare at the distant yellow neon light flickering as if swaying with the wind, I am wondering how long it would take for these candles to die, for the last speck of light to leave this room and for one of us to finally leave the table to switch on the light.

I catch her smiling at the wall.

"What?" It came off as a whisper as if making a conscious effort not to wake up the angel of sleep who was sleeping next door. And she started off with another story about her boyfriend talking of every detail like a 5 year old girl after the first movie she understood. I nodded my head half amused, half happy at seeing someone so blissfully in love. In that dim lit room, it looked as if she had a halo of happiness around her radiating into every direction.

Soon, the words blur and all that is left is an image - of us. It suddenly strikes me that there would so very few of them who would be lucky to have a relationship as this one. All around me were men and women working on taking relationships further, slipping in uncertainity, leaving a cloud so that tomorrow brings a surprise that they wish happens, skipping a beat when a word is left unsaid and tossing themselves at nights wondering where they stand in the wheel of life. And there are those who wouldn't cross the bridge of social definitions - men and women who wear the glasses of social perception, without which they could never know if they are in the right track. They would work within walls they built, making choices and saying stories of world beyond that's morally challenged, ethically crippled and definitely unsafe. And late at nights, they would lie sleepless in their safe little beds, alone, wondering how it would be to let someone in here and say what they feel.

And between the lost and shut - were we basking in the comfortable silence letting the candles bear witness to a heavenly moment of contentment. This relationship was still water - there was no place to go but here, no future to dream but now. It's about this very moment - about an implicit trust, a platonic understanding, good food, a bad joke that only the two of us find funny, seers murders and social issues, social gossip and sweet little things that the two of us love to do. it's about making short trips to those little stars that can't be visited in this odyssey of life, a small canvas in the corner where little dreams come to life.

We neither bury differences nor resolve them. we live with them - crichton's new book and a story of a riot share the same table, cooking classes and poetry lessons go on in the same room, a distant star can either be an angel's bed or the home to another civilization. And as silence fills the room again, a hazy image of harry and sally play themselves on the wall as harry vehemently claims, "a man and a woman never be friends". The images dim as the candles burn their last breath to light and as I switch on the light and smile at her, they are all but gone.