This is what I saw when I spent my holidays with my parents... at that time my pa was recovering from an accident and he used an autorickshaw to commute to office.
He stood there, in front of the gate that slandered about the paintwork it was losing. A thousand thoughts ran through his mind, wresting with each other to get a larger space than the others in his conscious. The occasional rumbling titter of the auto-rickshaws made him shake the sheets of his conscience as thoughts took an unfair advantage of the silence and settled on them. He waited for that frail looking auto-wallah who would take him to the office.
He looked up, few drops of tears tried to break through the walls of his pride as his everything smiled at him from the balcony, a smile that seemed to have won the battle with her demons and had somehow succeeded in reaching her lips. He knew she would not leave the balcony until he leaves and that day the sea of his emotions looked rough. So he waited with a strange restlessness for the auto.
He used to board the city-bus for the office but the recent accident forced him to depend on this mode.
Finally he heard the tutter of the rickshaw that sunk his heart. Again in that hell. I worshipped the Gods there for 30 years and now they have cursed me to serve in this hell a smothered complaint.
Without even a word he glanced towards the balcony and their eyes bid goodbye to each other. He bore the look of a strong man but inside he knew he melted in agony and she tried her best to give him all the love in a single glance that would stay with him, the whole day giving him the strength to face the day that was about to embrace him in its deadly arms. With passing years he had learnt to bog down the tears, now he didn't even feel them sting in his eyes. She though was not so strong and few dew drops rolled down her cheeks as she hid them from her everything by turning her face slightly to the left.
(The moment he steps into the office his world changes into an inexorable struggle with time and work; covered with files and shouts, weighing him down)
She waits the whole day, counting every second on the clock, just to hear that familiar knock on the door. Her thoughts though wander awry, forced around by the mundane routine she has been living for years but she keeps her heart beating in that same rhythm. Restlessly sometimes she lets her eyes talk with the stars to ignore the noise that the ticking clock makes. She likes the way he slowly enters the house, keeps the bag on the table, untying his shoes. Her weary body blushes and with a renewed ecstasy she tries her best to become that song that would give him that relief, that calmness, for which he craves the whole day.
All sapped up and drained by the scorch of the working hours he hides everything. He so wants to talk to her but a strange fear, a tired mind and a desperation shrouded with the certitude that all this will continue the next day as a vicious circle, strangles his wish. He knows- All the love in the world would fail to fill her chalice which she has for him.
Silently he eats his supper; a death silence crawls in the room as she helps herself with the daily soaps running on the screens. He then retires to the bedroom, his eyes not having the strength to dream. She then follows him to the bed.
The clock ticks by and they pray within themselves... Make every second tick like it's the longest of the nights.
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