Where Parallels Meet

Chapter 7

Out to Read you like the thriller you are!

. . .

The library was an enormous affair spread in 8 acres, with its nine, architecturally extravagant floors. The entrance showcased a bronze statue of C. N. Annadurai, who is apparently the person referred to in all the 'Anna' places, obviously including the Anna Centenary Library, which is where we happened to be.

The humungous atrium stretched up to all the nine floors, letting in abundant natural light, giving the place its characteristic ambience.

We walked around the area, taking in the stunning architecture and the interior designing of the place. It legit felt like being inside an art piece worth rupees 1720 million.

The kids section, with all the brilliant colors and stimulating designs and state of the art sights, was very tempting for even adults, the Braille section seemed like something out of a sci-fi book. At the end, both of us discovered ourselves attracted towards the magnetic fiction section, with all the million possibilities counting on us to be explored.

The ecstatic scent, characteristic of old books was particularly strong right at the back of the section, which was covered with books on three sides.

Wispy wind murmured it's musings in occasional notes, while our race of heedless bibliophiles let the scent intoxicate us, letting it instantly make us feel relaxed, almost giddy.

Some random exploration, and a lot of bibliophilic sniffing later, we ended up on an airy, sunlit table next to a glass pane that looked down upon the unreal city.

Initially, I had a copy of Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner' with me, which I planned to relive today, but eventually, without even noticing when the shift occurred, we were both hallucinating in front of 'The Boy In Stripped Pajamas' which he had picked. The short, yet wholesome book was something neither of us was reading for the first time, but it held a peculiar spot for both of us.

He wasn't even someone who'd be interested in the plight of the Nazi Germany, simply because his geeky abilities were more towards the electronic and logical side of things than the historical one, but something about that book, something I can't point, glued us to it.

We pretty much read at the same pace, and we were all the way through the journey of the yellow covered master piece, when another shift occurred. The paperback weightlessly, peacefully shut in his hands, while both of us zoned out.

For a moment, space and time, somehow lost meaning for me, probably for him too. Being unaffected by the number of people surrounding us, or the time that just dauntingly kept passing by, I stared out the window, overlooking the garden, and a part of the road sputtering on life.

Miraculously, it wasn't the boys in the book I was thinking about. My mind just refused to settle on one thing, and the storm of thoughts kept cluttering and decluttering every once in a while.

I felt eerily detached from all of it. As if there was an infinity waiting for me to devour it. I felt untouched by the brutal time that altered everything into something different. I felt more than human. I felt higher than the height of my body, I felt longer than the limit of an eternity. It was so typically ineffable, that I almost felt the universe was absorbing me into itself, before a pair of eyes, trained away from the window, and questionlessly set upon mine.

He looked at my face, while I was still looking out at the onset of the evening. I didn't plan on meeting his eyes anytime soon.

He watched the steeps and planes of my face as if he was confirming, freezing what I looked like to an entity inside him. His eyes weren't transparent like I had seen them. They were clouded, not letting me in today. Today they were filled with words that he was yet to say, not questions, but answers maybe.

He watched, as if there wasn't a thing that could or would stop him. He watched in awe, as one watches a child, with innocent faith and with something I can't quite put a finger on.

He watched, in silence, as if wanted me to hear the words, and not hear them all at once.

I turned, after a long moment in his direction, meeting his unfaltering gaze with the interruption of petty words.

"What?"

"Let me watch?" he asked, mortally preoccupied with someone hiding inside my eyes, still not looking away. I wish: how I wish I had looked a little longer too.

. . .