Some Unspoken Words

The café in the middle of the town was actually a local getaway in disguise. It was swarmed by people every evening despite of being just an ordinary café, serving economical and not-so-bad food. Every day one could see excited children waiting for their muffins, old women chit chatting over their black coffees and tired workers post their nine-to-fives. Nobody noticed that old man in his mid-40s, who was a daily customer of the café, dropping by for his cups of coffees or sometimes for that rare bite of a pie.

She knew him because of the tips he left for her. He was just a small consolation to her watering job. For some strange reason she always treated him like a mere customer. She knew that he stared at her, sometimes even smiled when their eyes met. But she had a strong heart which could resist these random gestures of interest. All he did when he was in the café was write in his maroon diary. Maroon, such a peculiar color for a diary maybe that’s why one could remember it so vividly. She somehow knew that he was alone because a man who regularly came alone to a café, completely lost in himself, uninterested in the people around or the football games on TV, just proved that he had a detachment with the world. Maybe, he dwelled in an inner world of dreams, thoughts and desires only he knew about.

Just like any other day, he finished his second cup of coffee. For a change, a different waitress had brought him the bill although one could clearly see that his eyes were searching for her. After hesitantly paying the bill, she saw him leave through the door and in a split second the maroon diary fell from his pocket. She quickly made her way towards the door but he had already boarded a cab. With a little hesitancy she decided to keep the diary with her so that she could personally return to him and maybe earn something extra on her tip.

That night, she found it impossibly hard to keep up with an imposition of not opening that diary. But after that second glass of wine, she promised herself that only a few pages shall be read. After a few pages, she was sobbing. The pages of that diary were full of days of her life. He somehow knew the days when her boss had scolded her, when her mother living in the suburbs was ill. It was like he read her eyes every single day and wrote his unspoken words to her in the diary.

It was hard for her to go on reading so she kept the diary aside and the last page opened up. In faded ink a line read, “If only she knew…”

She decided not to invade further more into this man’s emotional privacy because now she wanted to meet him and talk to him. After ages she could sense a love so pure, that a part of her finally felt alive.

She waited for him to walk in through the café’s door again. But he never came. Perhaps he somehow knew that his words had been read and his secretive affection had been exposed.

The Lonely Lady

She was waiting there just like any other night. Her eyes were desperately searching for someone to console her loneliness. It had been too cold and too long. Her eyes were a little teary, maybe she had ran out of all those tears surviving these lonely nights, waiting for someone who never came. She let out a concluding sigh before giving up on yet another night.

She got up and threw away the shovel. The sight of that empty grave in the row of numerous other graves surely appeared ugly to her. Only she knew how the other graves had fallen in place and this last grave was taking too much time to fill. Perhaps some night there will be a fruitful wait that will complete yet another row of graves in her backyard.

She lit her cigar and walked off with high hopes of a better night.

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Poor lady.

The Three Babies

Each of the three babies awed at the setting sun. An infancy somehow finds wonder and astonishment even in a day-to-day life. The babies knew that it would get dark now and in order to distract their infant minds from crying, they had to resort to something.

That is when the TV came to their rescue. Somehow these babies could picture anything on the blank TV screen, putting their colorful imaginations to use and thereby entertaining themselves. But today was different, as that much awaited day of fun and games was here and each one of the three babies sat in a line, like three pre-programmed robots. One of them tenderly pressed the power button on the remote control.

As soon as the TV was on, all 3 of them clapped, uttering cute gibberish words to express the happiness they felt inside their little hearts. There were three ends of ropes kept beside each one of them. After their gibberish display of happiness ended, one of the babies pulled the rope kept beside him. Immediately after the rope was pulled, all three babies screamed with glee as they clapped with joyous expressions, looking at the screen. Now it was the second baby's turn to pull his rope and even he did the same, replicating the same reaction.

Finally the third baby pulled his rope but somehow the other babies did not burst out into an outburst of amusement. So he pulled it again and again and again, until the rope finally broke off and fell down like a lifeless serpent. The baby got up, hiding his anger under an irresistibly adorable face. He headed out through the backdoor into the backyard. He ran towards the stool which was the only thing his eyes could spot. As soon as his tiny palms reached the stool, he pushed the stool hard and it hit the fence couple of feet beyond. With this the two babies sitting inside started cheering loudly. The baby's eyes looked at the pair of legs hanging down. He laughed watching them tremble as they eventually became still.

The baby looked up at the face of the corpse hanging from the tree, "Wasn't that fun?!" he said and ran away inside.

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I love babies.