SMALL THINGS DO MATTER

“ I am not crying. It’s just something in my eyes.” She said, wiping the corner of her eyes. I didn’t say anything. I rather preferred looking at her as much as I can because there were just two hours left.
She said again, “ Why are you staring at me like this?”
“ Sometimes you must not stop tears.” I said. She looked into my eyes. The look was same as it had been for the last two days. Leaving her was not easy for me too but I had to be practical. This day had to come. We both knew it. “ I know what you’re going through...but...try to control yourself. There’s no way out. And both of us were ready for this. Weren’t we?”
She hardly nodded. But she did. I noticed.
She got up, wiped off the sand from her skirt. Some sand even fell on my face. She went further, near the wet part of the beach. Standing on wet sand feels so pleasant, I know. May be she was trying to assuage her grief. I remained sitting. I wanted to give her ample time to react. She had been beset by surfeit of emotions for last so many days.
I looked at the distorted plaits of her skirt, at her ankles with mud particles clinging, at the shape of her lower legs and I looked at her way of standing. Since the first day, her feminity had me captivated. She went ahead and I was surprised that she had entered the water. She stopped walking when her feet were inside water. I was surprised. She was standing inside water! She had always been afraid of that. She said that she felt as if water would pull her inside itself.
Moments later, she looked at her watch. I wondered whether she was looking for time or she wanted to have a look at the watch, which was my first present to her. She remained standing there.

I remembered the time when we first met, two months ago. It was outside the airport. I identified her from her green dress, which she was supposed to wear, as decided by us during chat. I was to wear orange T-shirt. She looked a bit nervous. But that was just for a while. I took initiative in conversation and she got normal. We went to a restaurant near her office. There I gave her this watch. She was flattered. We had no topic to talk on. Hesitation prevailed all the time. Virtual relationships are lot different than real ones, I understood that day.
Next day, as planned by me, went smooth. The level of hesitation was quite less and even the online humour was setting its feet in a real world too. When she said to me that she enjoyed my company, I was left wondering, people enjoy my company! That day I had made her very clear that loosing our hearts to each other must not happen because she was engaged to someone. ‘We must be practical.’ I had said to her.
Nothing appealed me but being with her. The touch of her hand in my hand felt like I always needed it. Being with her on beaches was the best time. Although, we didn’t play in water but still we enjoyed a lot. We liked watching couples spending their intimate moments. Most of the time we sat in the sand, usually her head leaning on my shoulder and she would keep telling me about herself, her family, her life and everything for which I had always asked her on internet. I knew getting engaged was just a compromise for her. She had actually succumbed to family pressure. She never wanted to talk anything about that.

I went near her, kept my hand on her shoulder, round her neck. She looked into my eyes. “ I won’t stop you.” She said.
I smiled. “ Shall we go? Just two hours left.” She looked at her watch.

She helped me in packing. Seeing her in my flat had always made me feel so good. I loved seeing her around. Seeing her picking out clothes for me, working with me in kitchen, using the same washroom and seeing her doing things for me, seeing her showing care for me. I loved to see the way her things were scattered in my flat as if we shared the place.
“ I want to keep this T-shirt with me.” She said, picking up my orange T-shirt that I wore during our first meeting. “ Can I?” I nodded.
“ How will you remember me?” She asked me.
“ I don’t need anything to remember you.” She came closer to me and kept her head on my chest. Soon my shirt was wet of her tears. I moved aside. This was all going so wrong, I thought.

She was to drop me at airport. We spent a silent journey in car. Both of us reminiscing back all the sweet moments of our togetherness. In the same car we had gone to long drives. It was the same car, where we drove on the beach and cops chasing us. It was fun. It was the same car when we kissed for the first time. We had been to a party but we didn’t enjoy it. We came back to car and preferred to go somewhere else. I couldn’t help myself from staring at her ravishing body that day. She looked stunning in that brown-sequined gown. We ended up having our first kiss. She separated first and I conceded to her wish.
“ We still have some time. Wanna sit at our usual place?” She asked. I didn’t refuse.
“ One condition. You’ll have to have whatever I’ll order.” She nodded. I ordered Pasta
She looked at me. “ I won’t have it.”
“ Just for me.”
“ You know I can’t have it. I nearly vomited last time.”
“ Last time when we ordered Pasta, you laughed like never before.” I said. She looked at me. “ And since then I haven’t seen you laughing...or smiling.” She lowered her eyes but I continued speaking, “ I want to see you laughing, smiling, giggling before I go. And I want you to realize it that I’m going. I don’t want you to keep any hopes alive.” Although I changed the order but still she went to washroom.

There were still forty minutes for the flight and we had already reached the airport. As the time was coming near, my heart was also pounding. She was now silent. Didn’t speak even a bit. We sat in the waiting lounge. She was sitting just beside me. I had been noticing her for a long time. I felt pity on her. I kept my hand on her hand. She looked at me. I looked at her with my supportive eyes. She put her other hand over mine. “ Don’t worry, I’m not gonna break down here.”
I smiled and looked at her engagement ring, “ Try to make this your life. He is a nice guy.”
“ I know...and I want that soon you get an engagement ring for you too.” She said.
I smiled. “ Till then, I have this ring with me...” I looked at my finger. I was horrified. There was no ring. “ My ring!”
She looked at me. “ What happened?” People beside us also looked with curious eyes.
“ Where’s my ring?” I asked.
“ Which ring?”
“ The one you gave me that night on the beach.” I said, looking for it in my pockets. Then suddenly I remembered that last night I had been looking at the ring in the balcony of my flat. I kept it on the table when my cell phone rang.
I got up. “ O my God! I had left the ring in my flat.” I said. “ Give me the car keys.”
She gave me the keys and ran behind me with my bags. “ There’s no time.”
“ I’ll drive fast. I need to get that ring back.”
“ But that’s just a ring.” She said.
“ No.” I turned back and shouted at her, “ It’s not just a ring. That’s the only thing I have to remember you.” She stopped where she was; perhaps, she was surprised at the utter expression of my feelings for her.
She ran after me. “ But you won’t be able to come back. It’s just half an hour left.”
“ I don’t care. I need that ring back.” I said, coming out of the airport.
She was running behind me. “ Look, lets do this...you go now and I’ll mail you the ring.”
“ No way. That’s something so close to my heart and I can’t leave it just anywhere. I’m already cursing myself for leaving it there. I feel terrible.”
I got in the car, came out of the parking and came on the road. She stopped me and came inside. “ You’re doing a mistake. There’s no way. You can never catch the flight back.”
“ I don’t care.” I drove in high speed. Even the road was empty so it just eased my way. I looked at her; she was looking at her watch.
She was worried, “ You are doing a big mistake.”
“ Just shut up now. Let me drive.” I shouted.
“ What the hell that ring means to you now. You said you don’t want to remember me.” She said raising her voice.
“ It’s the only thing, which will make me think of you.” I said, calmly.
“ Why do you need to think of me?...When you don’t love me.” She said.
“ Yes, I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone.” I shouted. At heart, I was filled with chagrin. The traffic was increasing now as I headed towards the inner city. The lane on which I was driving was one way and it was also a cheap fish market. People were just not ready to move aside. I was blowing horn but I couldn’t put car into third gear.
“ You don’t even know how to express your feelings.” She nearly whispered.
“ What did you say? What did you say?” I asked.
“ Nothing.”
“ Just say what you said.” I looked into her eyes.
She asseverated this time, “ You don’t know how to express your feelings.”
“ Ya. I don’t know anything. It’s just I know how to break hearts. I have broken hearts of my parents, my friends and now you.” I took the steep turn on the main road. There were just ten minutes left for the flight. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to reach the airport. The flat was still five minutes far.
“ You haven’t broken anyone’s heart. You just judge people by your own assumptions and you make your own judgments. No one ever said to you that you broke his heart.” She uttered. Her voice was not harsh this time. But wasn’t she right? I thought. No one has ever said that to me. She continued further, “ You run away to extricate yourself out from everything. That’s what you always do. Your parents were never against your profession, they just wanted to be carefree about you but you don’t allow anyone to peep into your life. You just run away. That’s what you did with your parents...and that is what you are doing now...you just exacerbate everything.”
She had left me wordless. I had indeed never allowed anyone to peep into my life, never allowed anyone to question me. She said, “ Relationships are not like that. You have to express your feelings, you have to respect the feelings, you have to be answerable to people. But everything’s so rigid with you…”
“ And still you love me.”
“ Ya, still I love you...even though I know that I’m engaged to some other person but still I dream being your wife. You want to know why?”
He looked at her. She continued, “ Just because you’re strong where I am weak. And you understand me well. It’s just you make some decisions and you become so rigid on them that no one can interfere into your life to make you realize that your decisions are wrong sometimes.” She stopped. “ And you want to know what’s the reason behind this?...It’s just because you don’t express your feelings. When it is necessary to say something, to feel something, to express something...you fall weak and then you just run away from everything.”
I applied brakes. We had reached our destination. I ran upstairs, unlocked the door of my flat and went to the balcony. The ring was kept on the table where I had left it. I picked it up. She was standing behind me. I looked at her. She came towards me, took the ring from my hand and put it into my finger. Till then my eyes had watered. I just said what was needed at the moment, “ I love you.”
She looked into my eyes. I tried to wipe those tears with my hand but she stopped me. “ Sometimes you must not stop tears...let them ooze out.”
“ Men shouldn’t cry.” I said, feeling emasculated.
“ I read it in a book, big boys don’t cry, but men do.” She said. We hugged.
I missed my flight. I wanted to be alone for some time so I sat in balcony. I knew she was waiting for me inside.
After about half an hour, she came running to me. I couldn’t understand what was the matter. She brought me in the living room. TV was on and the news channel was showing that an American Airlines flight 11, a boeing 767 crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York city.
I was transfixed. We stood arms in arms just looking at the benevolent ring that had saved my life.