Compatibility

Day was melting down mildly. It appeared beautiful every time, the melting hue of bluish sky into dark to darker one. And soon, the twilight would acquire absolute serenity, would rest peacefully for some time, for time she would be there. The day was similar to the bygone ones in most respects. Pace of sun, race of life, gush of attitude, toss of fate were perpetual constants. Only few minute details appeared responsible to add differentiating shades to the passing days. So, yeah, the day indeed was getting darker and she was setting faster, faster than her usual rapidity. The quick motion her hands acquired would hold the attention when watched over. Her swift bodily movements were the subjects of fascination. They represented her intrinsic timidity and flaunted her extrinsic rigidity that was still in an infantile stage. The season was winter and hence the sacks mostly occupied the cauliflowers, then cabbage and broccoli. The vegetables appeared larger and massive for her wide and long hands as well. Still, it didn't affected her velocity. And soon, she installed before her a shop that boasted fresh and clean appearing vegetables. Within a while, people flooded before the lady vendor to buy her items for sale. The loud sound produced by the horns of vehicles would turn earsplitting at times causing her to urge her customers for numerous repetitions of their words. Embarrassment with its lightest shade would color her countenance. still, her newly acquired confidence in its blazing apparel would rule most of the portions. The seemingly unaffected composure of hers possessed the quality of deception, of beautiful lie, of disastrous betrayal. It looked too real for people to even suspect at her poise. And that was what keeping her there in spite of the lethal beauty she was instilled with. Even the harsh winter days conspired against her; they had cruelly sprinkled the shades of pink and crimson over her tip of nose and apples of cheeks that had sharpened her beauty, her foe, strengthened her possession that worked more against her than in her favor. Though, it might had helped her to collect few more customers, her status had actually overborne her stature. She had cried; she was hurt; a lot until recently she exhibited her esteem. It had just been few days more than a month she had left her village for the capital and she had already ventured a new way for her life to proceed. Her stance hinted the distance of her new craved path; one would easily affirm to thousands of miles when proposed. Her determination revealed that she would definitely go long. Her eyes seemed to acquire even more depth with each passing instant as if optimism from the single earth opted to settle on them.
So, yeah that day, that was the day when he, Arun, an architect by profession, first visited her; first time stood before the cubicle space she occupied. Though, he frequented that street at least once a day around those transition hours, that was the first time he got to notice her presence. However, it had just been a week. May be that's why it was still to hold his attention. Well, when it held the attention finally, it did that magically. He was helplessly confined in the fetters of her charm; of her grace; of her elegance; of her stance and most probably every thing of hers. First day he asked for vegetables alone and second day for her name along. “Hima”; he kept uttering even after he returned to his place and every time he uttered, he sounded as if he was scrutinizing the compatibility factors between her name and her persona. Third day onwards, he increased the level of discourse. It wasn't the name alone of her home-town ; he got to know quite a deal about the inhabitants, life, culture, assets and needs of her place. The discourse appeared much like a questionnaire. He would place before her the question and she would return the answer in limiting words. However, her pithy answers were not in any way misleading for people to infer her generosity to be sparse. Her each cell spoke for her instincts; she was so giving and she possessed no any kind of negativity or hard feelings towards anyone, anything. Double ears and single throat amplified the effectiveness of their purpose of existence in order of their frequency up to the maximum in her. Her continuous sharp attention towards his words clearly explained it. The conversations were getting more intense with their increasing frequency, with the passing of the day. The sweet aroma coming from the incense sticks burnt at nearby meat shop would add more desperation to the intense discourses between the two. The abstract attachment between the rifts of the two was mildly merging the differences between them. Her colors began to cast on him and his onto hers. They appeared glowing with similar hues; the colors had uniformly confederated and so evolved the similar shades in both. She was slowly getting to understand the biology of her physiology and the impact it would cast on psychology. Well, to be more clear, it existed no longer, her carefree attitude towards her cleavage that showed up most of the time. Feminine shyness would govern her countenance when her regular red shawl would appear to slip down in at times. And while he observed such stance of her, a smile with the essence of romance would get settled in his chiseled and elongated face. Love was budding and romance was everywhere, in everything; in dalliance, in silence, in disagreements, in approval, in lateness, in exactness. A turbulence would evoke in her when he wouldn't show up in some occasions and the other of its kind in him when she would be too busy with her customers. No any prerequisite, no any norm, no any code of ethics, nothing was under surveillance of their association. The bond was as limpid as distilled water, as beautiful as liberty, as comforting as embrace. It appeared, in fact, it was actually one of the very few incidents that consisted truth amidst the bulks of falsification all around. And, also it was the most genuine among the multiple facades of Arun's life. The fabricated passion he had build up for his profession; the toils from the strenuous and hectic days and nights; the madding desires of his obsessive lower-half; sympathies and empathies for lives in turmoil; no other dimension of his life intermingled with the strings of bondage between the two.
The tie-in was as easy and as strong as truth. All sorts of derived incongruities from the lives of both were absent. The decisions of hearts flowed smoothly by mind causing no any hindrance. The feelings transposed and casted themselves in screens of reality. Meanwhile, they sighed together in each other's arms. He had never before found such carnal proximity so near to soul. Even his first intercourse was left far behind to ignite him with few memories, though faded. The night became a canvas to hold with regal air, the rare yet real portrait of love manifesting itself with the colors of solace rather than perturbation, colors of longing rather than need, colors of determination rather than desire, colors of unconscious flow rather than conscious limit, and colors of truth lacking even a trace of lie. Next morning, he escorted Hima to her place. He was finding the walk difficult; difficulties from the unfamiliar night, difficulties from the unexplored feelings, and difficulties from the genital bleeding..well, yeah, may be from the prolonged sex, from those soft tender feelings that made it hard for the detachment. He bled almost continuously the whole day. The intensity was increasing. so, the other morning, he saw the doctor and the doctor showed him with the shock, ransacked his worthy consciousness, extracted sweat from his cells, shackled him in chains of immense dread. In addition to the normal check-up, he had had his blood tested. The memoirs in red light began projecting in his mind. Day turned night abruptly. He saw nothing in the ambiance. He could only feel the torment from those disastrous penetrations of past that would converge his near future to a dead end. He had just began to love his life, had just had few glimpses of truth when suddenly the satanic reality casted its umbric shadow over his present leaving no space for future. '
Meanwhile, the doctor declared Arun as diseased, a HIV positive. Blazing agony got settled in him. It was one of the happiest countenance of sorrow that reflected from the Arun's life. After about a week, he was instilled with the reminiscences of hers, of Hima's. They appeared so ancient, as if the reminiscences were from his past life, life before the current one. Holding along with him the antiquated memories of Hima, he went to her dwelling to see her and to confess his crime. She wasn't there. Someone else was. The dumbfounded state didn't existed longer than few seconds; he asked about her with the person living in that room. The guilt had outshone the sorrow at that instant. But all of a sudden, it wasn't just that she left for her village that he knew. The hard adjective that preceded her name introduced him to the disguised persona of hers. He knew, that she had been serving the lustful and frenzied desires of vagabonds like him. Shock had already lived through him; nothingness restored its prowess from that very instinct he felt at that instant. Everything melted into void. Emptiness got the ascendancy. He marched towards the royal emptiness in the vacant road lifting the load of his null self..