The Sounds Of Silence

The sleek blue car stops a little ahead of the traffic signal .She crosses the road –gets into it, cell phone glued to her ears still. Swiftly, the dark windows are up again and the car is purrs on .He says ,” Sorry I am late “She nods , briefly smiles .She will not look at himSilence. And silence has so many sounds .It is deafeningly loud – like the sound of heartbeats on ears pressed against the ribcage. That loud. And dangerously close. Sometimes, she wants to reach out and touch the silence between them. Sometimes she wants to break this silence down through endless chatter They are going to his house. She has waited for this day now, for really long. Must be millions of moments. They must talk, must sit across each other, must look into each other’s eyes and tell their truths. That is the plan. The plan does not include tearing down each other’s clothes, but who knows, what may be?.It is a lonely house -clean, biggish, Spartan. He stays here, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, alone. Not even a domestic help. He can manage it all. She sees him everyday in office -managing larger things , beautifully.They stand besides each other in the open terrace,hearing the night- crickets drone. Closer than ever before, but still an inch apart,- far enough to be not together. They listen to the rustling of branches, nudging each other into a whisper. They look up in search of their own stars in the charcoal smothered sky .He talks, she talks. He talks, she listens. Words jumbled together and strung into thoughts, into theories, into dreams. It is cold outside. The summer winter of South India, descends on them slowly, surely. Her hands are cold, she snuggles them into the crook of his elbow- without thinking too much about it .He pulls himself together, electrocuted by the touch .A nervous tension makes him rigid and trickles down to her through him. She sits down on a step, her head against his upper arm. They bask in each other’s smell. That is where they shall limit themselvesWhat is this ?This conversation is not what she wants. They are talking about life, about the future, about careers. They agree mostly,- they understand perfectly,- they always do. They are mature grown individuals. They have goals to follow, they have paths defined, things for which they have worked hard. These are very important elements of their lives. They also have parallel lives, they are daughter, son, brother, girlfriend, what not. They are bound by their perception of rights and wrongs, by a matrix called conscience She just wants to break the silence. She wants to talk about them, Of togetherness.There is no themAfter two and half hours, they have talked enough. They know each other better. Still inside her is a roaring wave, which does not reach him.The evening must come to an end .He drops her home. They thank each other, happy for themselves, having been able to steal a look into each others soul.She walks out of the car into the noise of a televsion set, to life as she knows and accepts Silence sits around her like a shroud