Story Telling: The Date

By Chhandak Pradhan
Kolkata, India

On a night like this, she would not have been out. But tonight, it was different. It was August 6- their anniversary. The drizzle resumed as they rushed to stop a speeding taxi. Slanting silver ropes slammed into the puddles around them disturbing the reflected temptations of Park Street.

He looked into her eyes and resisted the impulse to joke. She was lost! Whatever had distracted her still disturbed her. She was looking at him, but looking beyond.  In the speeding Ambi he watched the cinema of neon-lit city dreams stream across her face, seductively playing with her lips before tumbling down the décolletage of her little black dress. But the coloured affection failed to reach her eyes. She seemed resigned to her fate.

“The opiate of love deprives the soul off desires. Floating in the Dead Sea of the ultimate aphrodisiac, there’s no pain and no feeling of grief.… Remorse drifts like ocean weeds and vanishes into the grey stillness.... Body succumbs to a cryogenic slumber, the listless heart beats faintly and breath mellows to random whispers as one slides towards oblivion…..”

He was still shuffling through his thoughts when he realised that it was their street. They walked back from the cab and as they went through the wide French door of their ground-floor apartment, a desultory breeze riffled the white curtains. The rain grew heavier. He tried to switch on the lights but realised that the ubiquitous Calcutta power cut had kicked in. She went in and soon a soft yellow light filled their inner sanctum…..

She had changed into something informal that seemed to hug her snugly like a protective lover on a winter evening. He stupidly envied her dress. Their eyes met and held. Thunder shook the streets and lightning filled their eyes as they stood beside the poster of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ that she had managed after bribing a cleaner of an Esplanade cinema hall.

Their flight was late and by the time Nahiya and her husband reached the South Kolkata address, they were greeted by the sharp glittery sunshine that follows a heavy shower. He entered the cobwebbed interiors through the wide French door and saw Nahiya staring at a poster. “That’s my aunt’s. Beautiful isn’t it?” she said. The alley cat mewed and Audrey Hepburn looked on as he gazed at the calendar beside the poster. It still read August 6, 1962.


Image: Courtesy of Chhandak Pradhan