Cigarette~ Part I

“Cigarette?” Ana finally broke the awkward silence with her shrill voice.

A puzzled smile ran across Madhavi’s face. A kind of smile-whose genuineness was shrouded in mystery-, was all she could reply for.

"O! common girl! You are a smoker and still you don’t smoke. I mean how do you manage to do it?”

“Hang on! Hang on! I only know how to smoke but I don’t.”

“So?”

“So I am not a smoker at all, you stupid girl”

Madhvi’s life was dancing at her own tunes but suddenly a beat was changed by this unexpected re-entry of Anima in her life.  Today, without any prior information, Anima was standing at the threshold of her small apartment. After a while, it becomes easier for you to avoid those innumerable phone calls, mails and letters from your loved ones. But that does not prepare you to do the same when one of them is standing at your doorstep. Uninvited.  Anima had forcibly intruded her world and Madhvi had no choice other than to accept her with open arms.

The eerie silence prevailed throughout their stay inside the apartment. “Madhvi has changed for sure!” Anima retorted to herself little knowing that the caricatures on ones walls are not always the reflection of their souls. There are layers of layer in between and by the time the reflected images hold your attention, they are all contorted.

After futile attempts at making some conversations, it became almost a necessity to step out into the open. Anima portrayed as in she remembered every beautiful thing, whereas Madhvi retaliated by pretending not to care anymore about anything. Separating their existences, the invisible glass wall stood upright, which they dared not to break.  The reminiscence of all those tears painted on crushed papers of life and the memories of hearty laughter they have shared once, made their hearts choke but not a single drop of tear was rescued.  The ebb and flow of time has thrown these two friends at two different corners from where the road that lead to each other was all weary and zigzag.The element of zigzag only suits some games of puzzle that one solves as a child. Life is all together a different board game.

Life has not been the same again since Madhvi has chosen to follow the path of her dreams. The rebel in her has snatched her away from everything and everyone she has once considered her own and have hold them so much close to her heart. Once upon a time, pulling them away would have teared and sliced many parts of her heart. But she survived.

***

Crossing down nine floors, the lift finally hit the floor. For a moment the left-over of a forgotten childhood engulfed them both. How much they have admired those skyscrapers and gawked at those illuminating capsulated elevators! How much they have wanted to get lucky enough to travel in one such time machine! The nostalgia of the day when they first stepped inside an elevator is still unmatched. It didn’t matter to them that that elevator was nothing close to those time machine kind of ones. The thrill encompassed by the initial feeling of nausea was still afresh in both of their memories. The feeling of that bygone era was so fresh that it could be read in their eyes and then could be rejoiced without uttering a word.

To be continued...(Perhaps)

P.S: Originally drafted way back in 2009. Edited on this very night.