The Umbrella Blues

I am escorting a dynamite of a girl to her conveyance after she finished her business of farewell-ing my brother. It’s been wonderfully raining for the past few hours, and most of that time I was in it. We are seeing my brother off at the airport and it is one of those good moments that is a mash up of festivity, celebration, nostalgia, sadness, achievement and the general stuff attached to the ‘goodbye feel’.

The best part was that the girl beside me was sad, sad to the core; I am warding off the rain for her with a borrowed umbrella and I can’t escape the knight-in-arms-to-the-delicate-damsel-in-distress’s-rescue feel of it! And the worst part is that, you know, this was not My girl. I can see the beau hesitantly following us after infinite unsuccessful attempts at making a successful parting-away. (After all, its going to take an unsure four or five years before they can meet again, if they are going to meet again at all.)

We get to the steps, which we have to descend to get to the ground floor. The guy somehow discovers this is the ‘Laxman Rekha’ he cant go beyond, and bursts out of himself to make a final attempt to reach out to her; it so happens the discovery is mutual to the girl too and she turns back, slow motion filmy stuff and all…and they meet- hug- bursts of uncontrolled loud feminine sobbing that teases the curiosity of passers by who take that extra minute to watch the show, and also my ability for embarrassment.

All over, I see the guy going back, and I follow her down the stairs (in relief and with a stupid grin). God knows what kind of escorting that is!

It’s still pouring down and I am trying to spot an auto in the sea of cars so that I can get this thing over with. My numbed out mind, processing a million thoughts and getting hold of none, further bogged down by the immediate job at hand, dizzy with the hullabaloo, night lights and innumerous rain drops falling as if they were weightless, sparkling gracefully across the helium lights before me, could still manage to sense everything was not over… I just about turn around, for no reason at all, and for heavens sake, and all the gods in there, I’m forced to un-percievingly see the guy running down the stairs, with that care-a-damn-for-the-plane sadness in his eyes, and Im forced to go through one more embracing session.

I don’t know if it is mentionable, but I felt it sweet childish and all; apart from myself feeling intruder-like, goofy and voyeuristic to see these kids (?) being so kiddish, to actually not kiss but kiss their hands and press it to the other’s lips(!?!). Tears rolling (as if they dared to challenge the magnanimity of the ferocious rain drops), hearts wrenched, time stilled, it was love, in all its intensity, I could feel it.

Now it suddenly dawned on me—the scenario. Here I am holding an umbrella, unaware that it was not a wee bit saving me from the rain; perfectly serving the purpose of devotedly cocooning an adorable naïve couple in one of the best moments of its relationship; within about just a feet far from in-person, tangible ‘Love’, the nearest I have ever been; unconcernedly and vainly happy with shrugging at it.

What I felt that fleeting instant is beyond a recapitulated portrayal. I saw the flipside of it.
I mean—its ok, if I am 23 and never checked out love; I can convince myself that it is ok that the only love life I ever live is what I live in sporadic books; its also bearably ok if I am the atlas un-shruggingly carrying the ball of all the bad-luck in the world; I can just about manage to make myself survive to the next day cognizant of all my cowardice and apprehensions; and I can also manage to live life like a corpse with a knowledge that given all this, ‘IT’ is not going to happen on any future day,(Well I still haven’t lost the capacity for a smile after all that, I smile now and then ;))—but what on lord’s earth am I doing eternally drenched, holding an umbrella to my lil-brother’s ‘Hey-Khuda-Hafiz’ love with a foolish grin on my stupid face? What the hell was it that was shielding the knowledge that I have been reduced to an teeny-weeny little rat who happily or unhappily but surely without dignity was scraping his teeth at tiny crumbs falling out of other people’s table? I mean where the hell was the guy lost that moment, the guy who thought he would have it all or fall bloated.

That scene was--Divine sarcasm, heavenly joke, mocking surrealism, ultimate tragedy, goofy numbness, plain foolishness or yielded loserness. What ever it was, I never could have imagined, a borrowed blue umbrella could ever make me feel so blue.