The Escape

Today the raindrop trickles onto my palms and further rolls between my bangles and slowly elutriate me while I cuddle the aura of purity. The washing of trees, grass, roads, and people are so becoming the part of unknown music to which my heart dances deep inside. It taps on the windows and on the floor, and on terrace, and it’s becoming impossible for me to take myself out of the whole meditation. The grey clouds make me comfortably look out over the busy cityscape while people rush under the trees and bus stops in order to keep themselves dry. Cabs starts to add up the chaos of traffic jam and in midst of all I feel free and alive and wonder why I use to get wet in rain before.

It didn’t start the way it should and I wasn’t one of those who expect miracles and fairy tales coming to life in my routine. I glanced at the lobby and he stood way behind the velvet curtains with the agent. A vague glimpse of a young handsome man in mid 20s filled me with anxiety to look on further by raising my heels. This was not normal – the first sentence stood up in my mind. Why a person like him would be paying to spend some hours in a company of a bad reputed female. He looked like a typical dream boy of every girl. In the midst of dilemma he approached from front in a cute deep-neck red top and Khakis. It felt like time has stopped for a while unless I realized he was standing with his hand towards me with an approach to introductory hand-shake. Usually I never tell my real name as these meetings are pointless, but this time my sub-conscious mind cheated me and spoke for the first time my real name to a client. Perhaps I was numb, deep inside. That particular microsecond felt me as if I was standing there for minutes. I shook his hand and felt his energy through the touch shaking the core of my personality and we both approached to the hotel room. I felt my heartbeat in my neck while I walked few steps from the hotel lobby towards room by holding his hand. Was it him or I couldn’t take my hand off was a kind of gesture makes me chuckle every second. I was in turmoil of Hundred-thousand thoughts. He opened the door and offered me the whole space, where I could best comfort myself. The word ‘shy’ does not exist in the dictionary of my profession and he was writing that word in my life which I left far behind in my hometown. He made me realize how shyness is felt by an Indian women in presence of a stranger. I took the left side of bed and rested my back on the bed-counter. In a meanwhile he went downstairs for room-service menu.

The mascara was okay, lipstick was fine, hair were in order and I look, the way I should but still I was feeling incomplete. I went to the attached bathroom for a quick touch and something went into my right eye. It was painful. While I struggled without spoiling my eye makeup he came inside and asked me if I need help. I will manage – I replied. But after couple of failed attempts he came inside and took out a broken eyelid from my right conjunctiva. He made me wash my face and eyes with running water and so my makeup washed away. You look much beautiful without makeup, he added and here I was, the real myself standing in front mirror. Now I was a lot comfortable with my own ambiguity. I realized that my true being, my soul was making up of opposing energies that sparked and created fire in me and perhaps this appearance gave me an inspiration to work as a Model in a big city when I picked my bag and walked to city to fulfil my dreams.

I saw charm in his every word, and I listened to him, and listened to him. I don’t know why I was flowing like a free energy towards him. It was never difficult for me to look in the eyes of my client but this time the things weren’t same as before. Perhaps he didn’t approach me in the manner for what I am.

He kept on talking and talking and I kept on smiling in between. I couldn’t hear a single word. It was like music filling up the deep void inside me. Is it the feeling they call love or an infatuation? I was completely baffled. I asked for a mango juice when he asked me to place an order from the menu to eat or drink. In no time he ordered for me and nothing for himself. I was quite disturbed too as he did not came near me. If it was his first time or what the situation was, I was confused. Perhaps the second backrest pillow was disturbing me in order to look at him in between and the time I pulled the pillow, it pushed my purse on bed making cigarette lighter slipping out as the zip of purse was left open while I was looking for lip-gloss. He asked me if I wanted to smoke and in returned I questioned him back if he was a smoker too. He denied and allowed me to smoke if I wanted. How could I smoke when I was already intoxicated by his presence? He came near me, grabbed the lighter and put it back in purse.

He kept on talking while taking my name in between. It went so intense that I was deaf again and suddenly I jolted with jerk at a strange noise. Ah- the doorbell, and was the room service with two glasses and a bottle of a mango juice. After a moment we were alone again in the room and I took a sip of juice from the glass which he gave me, and kept the glass on bedside stool. He dimmed the light and reclined near me on the bed. I happened to look at him in between and he was talking to me while he looked the chandelier constantly. He caught my vision and came closer to me and untied my hair making them fall on my shoulders. I didn’t object for the very first time. As such I never let anyone my hair undone by a client, not even my boyfriend. His each touch increased the temperature in my body and so my heartbeat.

He came close to me, a lot closer that our spoken volume went down. Now I could look in his eyes directly in dim light for the first time, and he held my hand near to his chest in way that I never ever wanted him to leave my hand. By now I could feel the palpations of my heart. I came to know in between that it’s just a dream and I was living it. The ambience was filled with romance and he was no more stranger to me. He was my Prince.

I melted in him and wanted him near my fibrillating heart for a while. I hugged him and kissed on his shoulder. In his arms I felt the safest place on earth. We talked about my life back in my childhood, my hometown, the games I used to play, my parents, my friends, my school, education and ended up him telling the way I entered in this awful society. A tear rolled down my eye and made his t-shirt drop wet. He lifted my face with his palms and kissed me on my forehead. That was the first ever sincere kiss I had in my life. If he is a sinner, saint, journalist, reporter or a surveyor was a question to myself but I was gone so far with him that it didn’t play any role. He kept me in his arms for, I don’t know how long, and suddenly his phone rang. It was my agent on the other side. Normally this calls tells the time left. And so was, just 2 hours left.

He again took me in his arms, and I was a bit surprised that he was not making any move beyond. I rested my Dupatta on the other side of bed and signaled him to go further. He embraced me in his arms and whispered in my ear, how beautiful I look without makeup and untied hair. He casted the spell in a second and I was transcended at a higher level. Those next, one hundred and twenty minutes were the unforgettable moments of my life.

I always thought that I loved somebody. Being there with him, I questioned myself, have I ever really been in love or am I even able to love? Life brought me to a point where I didn’t needed love anymore for rest of my life. His presence was like breathing to me.

My agent called and the inevitability of time began. I remember him standing at the window when I left the hotel and stepped in car. He took a sip of mango juice from the glass which I left and waived to me. I waived in return and looked constantly at him until the hotel window disappeared from my sight and he was lost.

He was in me – he is with me, wherever I am, with whomsoever I’m with, or even if I am alone today at the terrace, love is going on overflowing within me. He didn’t justify of my state being in love with him – he answered me how it feels being love.