After Rain

 After rain, there was a baffling darkness, but a sweet melancholic petrichor lingered on the balcony. It was because they had made love for the first time after the breakup. A ravaged bedsheet, dishevelled hair, traces of pubic serum, and the torpor of a forgotten past, hidden beneath the skin, lay scattered around the room. There was a peculiar taste on his shoulder, at least so she felt. Her melons were still ripe like a citrus fruit, a fragrance emanating from her aromatic oil.

In the beginning, there was only a promise. In the end, there was another. Between these two promises lay insatiable desires of summer, monsoon, and autumn. Winter was far behind in the race, and it was the cruellest of all seasons, inevitably bringing forth the aroma of rich plum cake from Nahoum’s Bakery and the incessant chatter that originated and led nowhere at Dharmatala where both of them experienced their first heartbreak.

Amid the incessant flows of recounters, there are multiple divergent parabolas of desires, aspirations, and hope. The converging lines are rare but eventually become evident. A scent, a taste, a place, or even the friction sound of a screeching vehicle or a lamenting violin at a rooftop pub is capable of summoning the ghost of your past. Sometimes, you are even luckier–you see the ghost at the next table, accompanied by another apparition that will soon be forgotten! And then, these two entities will once again hope, aspire, or even conspire to remain with two more ghosts they hadn’t met a week before.

You thought you would write a story, but the story writes you. Because nothing is pre-planned.

What happens was because it was inevitable to happen, if not for the best or the worst.

29 August, 2023