Eclipsed Hearts

CHAPTER 4

Out of all the naps I have ever taken, the only ones which would leave me satisfied were the ones I took in the afternoon, there was a weird feel to it, when you'd wake in the evening covered in sweat, your voice a greater depth than usual, a touch of weakness that one craves, the hint of longing, wanting to sleep more. Nothing makes sense and everything suddenly feels jolly yet irritating, like I said it had a weird feel to it.

I had woken up to the sound of rain, the split-splat barging into my room through the window and a few drops making their way towards me, my sight traced down from my bed and saw the pool of water forming, I managed to get myself standing, eyes half open, and leaped in attempt to close the window and had a quick glance. Outside, dark clouds had built, the shadow had already taken over the sun completely. I turned back wanting to lay again, to feel my bed's warm embrace engulf me back to the place I came from.

"SPLASH!!!!!" If only I had my eyes open, I could have avoided this instance. Fortunately, I was in no mood to get myself entangled in cleaning cold water off of the ground, so I did the only possible thing I could think of, a call to my mother. 

"Mummy" I screamed in a deep agitated voice, well I had the right to be vexed, after all my lovely evening nap was ruined by another lovely phenomenon.

After a couple more tries in order to get my mother to come upstairs and take a look at the wet mess that covered the floor, I gave up and drifted back into the land of dreams, where Chandra ran her fingers through my silky hair while we both sat on a window that joined two houses, a window that joined two souls, we talked of happily ever after, just like the movies, growing old together on a mountain and bringing tea to her in bed... but maybe, just maybe she did not want me there, because Chandra started banging my head like she wanted me dead, my head was safe but the sound grew louder and louder with each bang. After a minute of panicking, my eyes finally decided to open themselves and unfortunately the banging was still there.

My second attempt to have a lovely nap was short lived, something to do with that window. The clouds had stopped weeping now, and the banging was indeed Chandra but instead of my head it was the window she wanted to kill. Her mother had prepared gunjiyas and insisted we taste them too, so instead of having to come at the front door and knock she thought it was valid to knock me out of my lovely nap, for which she did apologize later, although I hate to admit it but the gunjiyas left me craving for more.

And as if my day wasn't already going bad enough, my mother decided it would be lovely to take the day-old guest to enjoy the expanse of the wet muddy farm, I was above the clouds, alas I get the chance of allowing the guest to experience the mud drenched slippers that fling mud at your back every time you take a step, this was sarcasm just in case. Luckily, I had somehow convinced Chandra's mother that she'd let Chandra accompany us on our little voyage. Chandra wasn't very happy about walking in mud, also because she had her white kurta to join us today.

The farm was not further away from the house, ten minutes and we would be standing by the borewell. The journey had started to become awkward, as if no one wanted to speak or even if we did, we had nothing to talk about. Were it not for Tam third wheeling us, I and Chandra could have had a very productive conversation about poetry. Even with so much moisture in the air, with his presence our connection felt pretty dry.

Unexpectedly Tam began "I am so sorry, we did not have the best encounter, I am Tam and you must be... Chandra? If I am not wrong. I have read a bit about you." I did not know where this conversation was to go because something felt fishy with his grin.

"Read about me? Was I in the newspaper or something?" Chandra asked, just as confused as me.

"No, No, not in the newspaper but you were the talk of the town in Suraj's diary"

Can't this day go more off the track?