Friday 16 January 2009

The Red Rose

It is probably some year at the end of the last century. Evening, a pleasant Delhi evening. The kind we often had before Delhi became this ugly, smoke filled, bellowing monster devouring all pleasantness from life. She, you and me are walking back from Kamla Nagar after the usual stroll to "kill" time.

A creature comes upon us bearing a red rose. Or is it a gigantic cauliflower. While he tries to offer it to me she berates him, in her inimitable fashion. It is a long, extremely eloquent diatribe. Flustered and frustrated he blurts out, “I don’t understand your British language.” And throws the flower and goes away. It is a red rose. We collapse beneath the burden of our irrepressible laughter.

How young we were. How unimaginably cruel we were. And how completely, unquestionably happy.

(For Bulbul and Nidhi, hope the latter still holds true.)

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