Life With Unfinished Dream

The moment I noticed Taniya at airport, I smiled. A medium stretch of lips with a twitch of cheek muscles. It was my favourite smile. Neither artificial, nor core to heart. It was a perfectly articulated smile with varied interpretations, and at that point of time, when Taniya came over and hold my hands like old days with glittering eyes and one hand in mouth, it surely meant, ‘Look at me. I finally manage to surprise you’. She noticed my black new suits, black shoe, purple tie, new spec and gelled hair. I knew I looked different. Polished. And she looked a diva. Women look better when they’re surprised.

The sky was blue and the ocean like a blue topaz. The island was known to me. The roads, little trees and faraway mountains and the white house at the corner. Familiar shops and faces. And then a little girl in blue frock ran towards me. I dived my nose into her neck and closed my eyes and smelled her. She smelled rose and strawberry and some unknown flowers. She held me tight and her smooth skin brushed against my rugged one. She kept her head on my shoulder and all it came back. I knew she loved it, to rest her head on my shoulder. She used to do it when she felt sleepy or tired. She was quite bigger now. She was at school. Her teachers smiled and her little friends waved her goodbye. She didn’t look at them. I brushed her hair and rubbed her back slowly. I didn’t believe she was real. It was like a good dream, which was meant to be broken.

But the dream lasted. For days coming, I watched both in their pajamas in fresh mornings, I giggled with them watching TV cartoons, I cuddled them randomly without any reason and smelled their presence. I kissed them while they went for school or office and when they returned. The best experience is when we can’t differentiate reality from dream. When life offers so much that you’ve no words to thank it and you lose sense. Like the dream, where I turned around in a windy beach only to find Taniya in a rainbow coloured loose skirt and vibrant top. She was smiling. I looked around and found Vedantika building a sand castle. I knew it was a dream, until Taniya embraced me from behind and kissed me. The wetness of her lips lingered long and I knew it was for real. We were at a resort. And then when she was laid on a hospital bed after a minor surgery, and she smiled at me everytime I visited her, and lights from window fell on her face, I kept thinking about the dream. Dream comes slow and goes so fast.

But I don’t mind. My life is little different. Not because I want it this way, but for the uncertainty involved in the whole process. I remember a dream. I was in an empty cinema hall. Dilapidated, decrepit and smelly. On screen, a group of Nazis were transporting Jews in a train to a concentration camp. Inevitable death. But the Jews were smiling, chatting and speaking with eachother, as if they were going to a picnic. Suddenly Allied Forces attacked and started to kill the Nazis and before knowing that the Jews were safe or not, the cinema hall shook. An earthquake. I had two options. I could sit tight there and finish the scene or I could leave. I never finished that dream.

Some dreams are meant to be unfinished. Like my relationship with Taniya. She tells me she doesn’t love me, but she likes me a lot. I don’t mind. Likable is the next best thing to lovable. I like the girl with open hair in metro and the girl who likes ‘Lord of the Rings’. They come to my other dreams. But I love Taniya. And I never finish that dream, even after her eyes glow when I see her and she shivers when I kiss her neck. Even after she cries everytime I leave her.

This time I lived full with two pagliz. It couldn’t be better. It couldn’t be nicer. I know the dream will continue, till I finish the ending.