‘How
do you say lover in Bengali?’ he was onto Google.
I woke up, still trying to process what he had just
said.
Messed up hair, eyes squinting from the lean ray of
sunlight that somehow managed his way inside through a hole in the window and
was falling right on my face.
‘How
do you say what?’
‘Lover.
Teach me the pronunciation.’ He was smiling, puffed
up eyes and a book in one hand.
‘What
is that book?’ I felt it to be so bizarre that he had
an English book in his one hand, and the other hand was on Google to learn
Bengali.
‘In
praise of love.’ He held the book close to his chest and
said, ‘It’s my favorite Philosophy book;
it’s yours from now.’
It took me sometime to process the whole thing- I
mean I was just up from sleep, still was staring at him from my left eye and
struggling to open the right, and there he was asking me the pronunciation of
Bengali words, and also giving away his favorite book; all at the same time.
He read my confused stare, ‘Sorry I get little weird when I’m in love.’
‘You
are in love? What?’ I was still considering how someone
could say something so huge, so easily.
‘You
aren’t?’ His hand with the book was still outstretched
towards me.
‘I
don’t know. It’s too early, isn’t it?’ I realized a moment
later, I had said the stupidest thing possible.
‘You must be hungry. I’ll make you an
omlette?’ He smiled and jumped to another topic immediately.
And I realized, love can wait till hunger gets done.
For the next one hour, he made me a breakfast, while
I read the first few pages of his favorite book.
‘How
did I end up here last night?’ I was gorging on bread and eggs.
‘You
came, we kissed. And it was very cold so we had rum, and you fell asleep here.
You look beautiful when you sleep.’ He was smoothing the
butter on the bread.
‘You
were watching me when I was sleeping? Dude, that’s creepy!’
I laughed and he joined in.
For the rest of the afternoon, we digested more
breakfast as laziness didn’t let us lift our butts and go for lunch, and I read
more pages of that book while he listened to music, often whistling my favorite
song to get a glance from me off the book, a shared smile, and getting back to
what we were doing.
The evening dropped down, with the typical winter
chill.
And I remember walking back home, with the biggest
smile stretching my lips to the point my muscles allow.
To be continued...
