The Unventured Passions

After Sunrise

At the dawntide the patio outside the palace window was alive with the compendium of the birds, each offering an orchestred prelude to the new day. Their music trilled, sweetly high, the chorus as playful as the birds themselves. With closed eyes, Raimoti imagined their music to be colours, painting the stairs to the Krishna Mandir where RadhaMadhav stood in each other's embrace. She too was in the embrace of her beloved, his warm naked body entangled with her own, his face buried in her bosoms, his arms snaked around her. Her own body was breaking in a mild pleasing pain, the pain of love...
Raimoti smiled. In the calm of the dawn, her heartbeat felt like the steady drum, happy to beat to the melody of the birds, and she seeped into the moment, allowing herself to climb those rainbow stairs of the envisioned royal temple, slowly, very slowly...

Somewhere towards a little east of Bengal, the birds sang on the branches of the white Krishnachura tree on the deserted railway platform as well, pouring sweetness to Mira's ears, as she quietly sat alone on an empty dew-drenched wooden bench, waiting for her Choto Zamindar Babu to come back.
Batakrishna had faced a few harsh realities that very morning. One, money was just another piece of useless paper unless there were goods to be bought.
And next, it was almost impossible for his heart to stay mad at Mira!
Following her advice, he had unwillingly opened the nameless tin trunk, only to find a few white dhotis, a new red saree, a glass jar of hand-made Coconut Naru, and an umbrella... all very mundane and simple.

"They don't pay well at the railways it seems." Batuk had awkwardly chuckled before Mira had almost shoved a white dhoti in his hands.

"Change... You don't want the entire village to see your..." She had looked away, and Batuk too lowered his head in embarrassment.

"But you have seen... So?"
He blurted out, wrapping the dhoti in his arm, looked for a hide to change, and it was then that Mira's prompt yet soft reply made him almost choke on his silence.

"So have you..." She had murmured.

The birds continued to chirp, filling the white misty atmosphere of that particular dawn with a hint of light-heartedness, and as Batakrishna came out wearing the dhoti below his off-white Oxford collared expensive linen shirt, teamed with the grey coat, Mira pressed her lips in a bashful smile and casted her eyes downward.
For, her Choto Zamindar Babu, amidst all his boyish hot-headedness, suddenly appeared to be unreasonably handsome, or so did Mira think!

......................................................

The familiar birds that morning had sung outside the windows of the Great Eastern Hotel in Calcutta too, but their song couldn't sieve the heaviness inside Anirudh Roy Chowdhury's heart. Infact, it had brewed the melancholy, making his head heavier with haphazard thoughts from the past. He was still seated at the farthest table of the in-house hotel bar, all by himself, and his pounding head lay buried in his arms folded and rested on the wooden serving table.

"Sir, it's morning."
A young bartender had approached him, as with a very gentle low voice he woke Anirudh up from his agony stricken comatose.

"Oh... Yeah... It is!" Anirudh smiled awkwardly, rubbing his reddened eyes and the young boy bowed and walked away at once, giving him the much needed privacy with his own thoughts.

Anirudh felt tired, sore, and the memories of the previous night flooded his senses with another round of sourness. He let out a deep sigh and gathered himself, before he pulled himself up from the chair and started to walk out.

"Sir your watch." The boy called him from behind.
"You tried to barter it last night, but we already have a tab on your name... So..."
He handed the watch to him, the same old watch that he had already tried to pawn off to seek a shelter for Raimoti.
Anirudh took it back and chuckled.