STRANGERS

The intoxicating mountain breeze was threatening to unlock the hearts that evening and I was an intent observer of the two contrary souls walking beside me. My wife’s fervency was complementing the composure of our new companion whom we met on our stroll when her car crashed with a lofty tree distracting us from reviving our best memories of a year’s marriage. We decided to accompany the injured lady to her hotel, adjacent to ours.

Her restlessness bared out quite a few times and I surmised it to be the accident trauma. From her knotty set of words I deduced that either she was on a vacation like us or was on a run.

My wife’s pleasantries are often hard to ignore and I saw her gradually stepping into her amicability. With time, her fragility found comfort and her composure melted off, revealing her world. Their mirrored desires amused them, for both were cherishing standing atop the world, but one with her love beside her and the other longing for the same. She laughed, shared anecdotes and her verve reverberated through every entity around me. They both looked like teenage friends having a merry time. I chose to be a silent spectator, engrossed in the vivacity before me.

We halted with her several times when her trembling legs defied her walk. She was in pain. When I offered to help her through a tricky mountain trail while she was slipping down, she scanned me avidly before holding my hand as if she noticed my presence for the first time in the last one hour. At times her weirdness gravely reminded me of someone, but I chose to prevent the stranger from invading my memory lane.

  

When the lit hotel buildings came into view, an uncanny sinking feeling arrested me. Our journey ended on her destination and a part of me despised my slightest penchant for the stranger. She stood face to face with my wife and thanked her earnestly. She then turned to me and said ‘thank you for not letting me down’. I probably noticed a heartrending smile and a hint of tears in her eyes. As I saw her leaving, my wife told me that beneath this vivacious soul somewhere hides innocence, once deceived, and smiles veiling a throbbing pain.  A lump grew in my throat. However, deep inside contentment deluged me. I did not let her down. I kept my promise to meet as strangers if any crossroad of life imposed confrontations on us. Her touch lingered on my hands….perhaps on my soul too.