Halo

Vikram hated Diwali.

He hated the sound of the loud firecrackers. His diabetes wouldn't allow him to eat any of the millions of sweets floating around at this time of the year, but he hated them anyway. He hated the vibrant rangolis made by loving hands at every corner. He hated the candles and lamps lining every windowsill and porch-step of the small Chandni Chowk neighbourhood he lived in. But most of all, he hated the little twinkling fairly lights that the residents insisted on stringing all over his five-storey building every year.

And he especially hated it all this year. Diwali seemed to be mocking him. Even the stars, his only solace on lonely nights, were hidden by the dense smog that Diwali brought. Diwali was meant to symbolise joy, usher in prosperity; but for him, Diwali had always spelled loss. He had lost his parents fifteen years ago on a Diwali night. A stray rocket had found its way with unerring precision into the fuel tank of the car his parents had been in, on their way home from a Diwali party. Seventeen year old Vikram had been in the car too. But the Fates had planned an existence crueller than death for him. The force of the explosion had thrown him from the wreckage-- alive but badly burnt. He had survived with the left half of his face and body horribly scarred and disfigured, even after all his wounds had healed.

Vikram had carried the legacy of that accident with him for fifteen long years, in more than just scarred tissue. He had built a wall around himself-- one he wouldn't let anyone breach. Not that anyone wanted to. After all, if his disfigured face hadn't been enough to keep people away, his volatile anger and gruff manner certainly were. He owned the building he lived in. He didn't have to live there. But he chose to. It was far easier losing himself in the loud, chaotic crowds of Chandni Chowk, than amid the carefully concealed hypocrisy and ill-disguised curiosity of the upper-middle class neighbourhood he had grown up in. So he lived in Chandni Chowk and operated the middling textile exporting business his father had left him from his dark apartment-- alone, and although he would never admit it, lonely too.

Until she had come along.

A whirlwind of colour and sunshine in his carefully ordered, sombre life.

The first time he had seen her, he had been in a particularly bad mood. A rather important deal that had been stuck in the pipeline for ages had fallen through. The persistent knocking on his door had done nothing to improve his state of mind. He had opened the door, fully intent upon giving the knocker a piece of his mind, and promptly forgotten what he had planned. The most beautiful girl he had ever seen had stood outside-- a small smile playing on her lips, her nose-pin glinting in the afternoon sun, her hands playing alternatively with the end of her long braided hair and the cotton dupatta of her very ordinary pink printed tunic. The late-afternoon sun directly behind her head created the illusion of a halo. He had blinked. Halos weren't real. He had learned that the hard way. And he had waited for the repulsion to appear on her beautiful face, for her to cringe involuntarily and take a step backwards, while trying to mask her fear.

Only, it had never come.

She had continued looking at him with that melting smile and said in a soft, musical voice, "My aunt isn't feeling too well, so she sent me to pay the rent. I'm sorry if this is a bad time."

That's when he had realized that her big, beautiful eyes, although shining with a serene light, looked at him unseeingly. She was blind.

He didn't know what had possessed him to invite her in for a cup of tea. But later he had been glad that he had. She had accepted his offer of tea and in return had become his first friend in years. She had slowly broken through his carefully constructed barriers and found her way to his hardened heart. She had brought laughter and sunshine and even colour into his life-- both literally and figuratively. Her afternoon visits had soon become the highlight of his entire day and he found himself looking impatiently at the clock everyday around 3 'o' clock.