Wasn't it lovely?

*melody tiptoes softly out of reedy bagpipes and summer dawns momentarily*

" You should sing this song and come to my house"

"Do you know what it means?"

"But of course!

I can listen to your sweet voice for hours as it charms my heart beats to move faster. I can .."

" You know, even I know enough punjabi to know you fabricated 90% of that"

"Well so what! That's what it means to me"

"If you were to say it in English it would be hilarious"

"Shut up!"

"Well then. I sing this song and come?"

" No actually you won't come singing in your own baraat. But you should sing that to me when you ask me to marry you"

"What!"

"Are you saying you won't ever ask me that?"

"I'm saying asking is pointless when one knows the answer "

"Not even! Don't flatter yourself"

"I can't sing. How about a sonnet?"

"Ooooh! Would I like it?"

"You'd like it. How hard can it be to recite?"

"Recite?! You have to mean it and be miserable with the thought that you'd not written it for me first! "

"Well how about I just write one myself so that I don't have to be miserable?"

"You'd do that ?"

"I could. And?"

"Hmmm. Be original. Don't go down on one knee. Don't do a candlelight. Don't make it a diamond"

"Shouldn't I ask you out first?"

"Pfft! I'm too busy to date. I have *beep* degrees to attain"

" So you're going to leave me hanging?!"

"Don't act as if this is news for you"

"So one fine day so many months later I ask you to marry me straight up....... because I look like a fool?"

"You must be one. You forgot you have to put on your best act and suffer when you ask my parents first without my knowledge"

"Without your knowledge?"

"Didn't you say you wanted to surprise me?"

"So I'll have to ask your parents to keep it hush hush too then."

"But obviously!"

"So I have to make all the moves now?! Excuse me but I listed laziness as a hobby"

"As if I'd run behind a guy"

"Why would I!"

" Because I am too proud to do so"

" Leave that explanation for suckers. Can you even initiate a hug without melting to the ground?"

"Shut up! "

"Why would I do all this?"

"Oh because you never told me but along the way you fell for me really hard."

"I'm a free spirit!"

"Well you're supposed to say such things so that I don't catch on."

"Why wouldn't I want you to catch on to it?"

"Because you don't want to be turned down"

"But you just said you'd want me to ask you to marry me!"

"Shouldn't you fall in love with me first?"

"Exactly why, on this lovely walk along the creek on this crisp morning, are we discussing these hypothetical settings?"

"You didn't have a story to tell me so I told you one. Simple!
Now hand me all your icecream"

The cries of the cuckoos are mangled with the cacophony of the ugly native black birds.
There is an uneasiness in the ground as sequined white slippers tread softly on the clean roads of an officer’s colony.
There is a path that meanders out sans sprawling bungalows overflowing with potted plants.

it is a narrow path lined with dust laden trees. A few pieces of broken chalk lay scattered near the poor children’s scrawl. In a language she doesn’t understand.

She is but a trespassing guest.

There’s an emptiness you must fill in. Step right there. Fill the path, that goes nowhere, with your gaze. Stand right next to the scrawl.
It is near the child’s play you are missed the most.

In the hopscotch boxes faintly erased, a friend is needed. To hop together. Laugh over it all. To create a memory that remains as streaks of a smile .

But it isn’t a time to wait even if all stands here paused patiently. She walks slowly on the asphalt as it soaks in the late morning. Bends over and holds the piece of crude chalk. It feels like a clay ready to be molded, ready for its purpose.

She stares at the specks of blue inside the crumbling white. Her fingertips touch the protruding rounded edge. She leans over. The chalk lies two steps away after a momentary pause.

A bent figure straightens and adjusts the black shawl draped on the left shoulder. She walks back through the dusty path to the bougainvillea lined straight roads. She lifts open the metal gate and walks back into where she doesn’t belong.

It’s a game of pretense- we played house and pretended we belonged in the walls of pillows and roofs of freshly washed sheets.

We’re playing house a few leap years later. But it shall continue to stay alive just as well long after she has abandoned it.

And perhaps it is that. That chalked a name in the dust blown path. Two steps away from a lonely chalk.