Coulda woulda shoulda

She decided then that it will be a secret she would keep forever in her heart.
She watched him walk away and knew they would probably never meet again.

Dawn turned to dusk and dusk to dawn, the years passed.
She got married with 2.5 kids, a white picket fence (no, not really, a small apartment actually in the lower east side), and was widowed at the age of 62.

Her eyes are almost blind with cataracts now and she walks stiffly.

But even in the hazy world she lives in now, she sees him again at the park where she has been taking her walks for the last ten years.

He is different now but his eyes, through them, she can still find the boy she once knew and loved.

He sees her too and with a little courage...

Coffee? He asks.

It is a date that came a little too late

She nods her head and smiles, a little bemused at how age has eradicated the shyness of her youth.

They take a slow walk in silence to a cafe by the lake- a charming glass house filled with blooming flowers and hanging planters.

They sit opposite each other in a quiet corner of the cafe.. He orders his americano, she, her flat white.

She stares at him, unable to look away.

She wants to touch his crowfeet, the wrinkles.. so much time has passed. She feels strange- young and old at the same time.

She chuckles softly, shaking her head and thinks of all the coulda shoulda woulda.

You can have the world beneath your feet but time, it slips through your fingers and never returns.

Towards the past

Due to a glitch in the cosmos, the fabric of time and space was folded. The future, so it seems, becomes the past. Since the beginning of time, the Creator had laughed at the naivety of mankind for believing that there would always be a tomorrow. A father made a promise to his 5 year old son to bring him to the zoo tomorrow but on his way to work that day, he had a cardiac arrest and died. An empty promise he had made, even though it was not exactly his fault. An 18 year old girl waiting till the day she gathered enough courage to ask her lab partner to the prom. Alas, the lab partner, a fine handsome young man, was killed in a freak bike accident. The girl spent prom night gorging on Ben and Jerry's and snicker bars. She became obese 3 years later and suffered a stroke 7 years after the death of her lab partner. 

Men sometimes forget that tomorrow does not exist and its existence is only a make-believe one in our silly little human minds.

It is only till the glitch in the cosmos that the humans realize their folly, perhaps a little too late. What they have now is only yesterday and with this realization, comes an impending sense of doom. Without a tomorrow, surely they will be progressing towards Armageddon-the extinction of all mankind. 

Three seconds

It was a crowded room. Melody was in a middle of a lengthy discussion with a group of people from her philosophy 101 class. She gave her two cents' worth and listened as the others rattled on and on, about Socrates' idea of reality being shadows of the human's ideal form, of Plato's dialogues. Melody thought the discussion would never end. It was Lucas' turn to speak. She did not know him well and had spoken about five sentences to him over the semester, mostly about the weather. 

"What I love most about Socrates is his humility. The knowledge that what we humans know is truly limited. Remember the quote: "She who knows she knows nothing is the wisest"? That was what got me interested in philosophy."

Melody felt a strange pricking sensation in her neck when she heard his soft but firm voice. She lifted her head and glanced over at the source of the voice . Lucas' and Melody's eyes met for three seconds. In that three seconds, Melody felt as if she was in a bubble and that it was just her and Lucas trapped inside that little sphere. She couldn't hear the chatter going on around them and time stood still. It was then that she felt that her world was about to change. She had gazed into the soul of Lucas Matheson and she saw that his soul was kind and humble. And it was that three second gaze that had Melody changing her life course and trailing desperately behind Lucas. 

Melody was about to trade her entire life for that three seconds.

Whether Lucas had too glimpsed into Melody's soul was an unknown. A secret that Melody would perhaps never know. 

Melody's first dream

For the longest time Melody couldn't dream. Throughout her entire childhood and 30 years of adulthood, she had never had a single dream. She was envious of those who could dream. She would imagine that most people could do the impossible in dreams, like flying across rainbows, diving deep into the abyss of the deepest ocean, seeing creatures that one would never see on earth, or rocketing out into space and seeing earth at a vantage point. Her inability to dream broke her heart so that she would weep during the darkest hours of the night. 

If only there is a cure for dreamless sleep! She cried. 

Somewhere in the darkest of woods, lived a wizard. He felt the desperate cry of Melody and decided that he would concoct a treatment for her malady. He gathered some dried twigs, wild herbs that grew only in that darkest of woods he lived in, a lamb's ear, a sparrow's feather, nutmeg, cinnamon, star anise, and a wild boar's snout and brewed them for 3 days. On the fourth day, he muttered a spell and ended up at the doorsteps of Melody's brownstone apartment, between west 33rd street and Leicester square in New York City. 

It was 2:32am when he arrived at Melody's apartment. He entered the apartment and went to Melody's bedroom. Her breathing was even and her eyelids did not flutter a bit. 

Ah indeed she is having of those dreamless sleep! What a poor dear! The wizard thought. 

Carefully using an eye dropper, he placed two drops of the potion onto each of Melody's eyes. He blew on her eyelids gently and then, vanished into thin air. 

Melody awoke with a start. She thought she had just had her first dream and it was of an odd looking old man in her bedroom. 

That's quite impossible! No, it wasn't a dream I'm positive! Thought Melody. She didn't want to believe either that her first dream was that of an odd looking old man.

Melody went back to sleep.

Very soon, she found herself floating carelessly amongst thick fluffy clouds. She looked over her shoulders and didn't find any wings but yes, she could fly! She was thrilled beyond belief. She flew with the geeses heading south, chased after airplanes, whizzed past the roof of an ex-boyfriend's home, and hovered above the Statue of Liberty. 

She then flew to La Jolla beach in San Diego, and dove into the cool waters of the Pacific Ocean. She plunged deeper and deeper till she could touch the ocean's floor and saw spiky sea creatures, slimy eel-like fishes, colorful and luminous schools of fishes. She couldn't believe her eyes. When she had swam to her heart's content, she flew out of the depths of the ocean and to a small cosy apartment in Paris. She lighted the fireplace with a snap of her fingers and warmed herself before the cackling fire. She picked a book from the huge library inside the small apartment, the kind where you needed a ladder to reach the topmost shelves. She settled into a comfortable armchair and started reading Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast". She wrapped a soft throw around herself, sipped on a warm cup of thick gooey hot chocolate topped with tiny white marshmallows, and read and read. She fell asleep in her dream. It was one of the best nights of her 48 years of life and it was a dream. The best dream that one could ever dreamt of and Melody didn't want to wake.

Melody was found at 2:32pm in a small apartment in New York city, 4 days after the appearance of an odd looking old man in her room, cold and hard as ice, but with the most serene and beautiful smile on her face. 

Indian Tea Company

Teas. There are teas that are sweet, bitter, fruity, flowery, smooth, dry, light, strong. There must be thousands of teas out there. And it was so that Balrash who was enamored with the wonders of tea that he set up the Indian Tea Company with his entire life savings at the age of 32 (although his tea leaves were imported from Sri Lanka).

His little store is located on a bustling street in Mumbai, called Gandhi Marg. Men would come in after a hard day of labour, sat around, smoked their cigarettes, drank his tea and made coffee shop (or tea shop rather) talk. Balrash has a knack for guessing what teas his guests will order and for the uninitiated, he will recommend teas that he knows they will love. There was once a beautiful woman dressed in the most wonderful turquoise blue sari that glittered as she swayed, who wept after drinking Balrash's special tea blend and who later thanked him by kissing both of his cheeks. When Balrash was still reeling in shock from the kisses, she left the tea shop... without paying. Balrash then learnt to be wary of beautiful women in wonderful saris because one can never be too trusting of such people.

Balrash sees all sorts of people in his little tea shop. In the mornings, it is mostly the elderly with their canes and toothless grins, in the afternoons, it is mostly the housewives with their children in tow, or the drivers taking a break while waiting for their employers, in the evenings, it is mostly the shopkeepers, the bricklayers. Balrash would stand behind the wood-paneled counter, pretending to be polishing the tea cups but his ears are always pricked (much like a cat's) to the chatter in his tea shop.