Cafe Conversations VIII

 Cafe Conversations
Wednesday, 1:00 pm

“Abhijeet it is a regular lover’s feud. Are you going to sulk like that all through the evening?” Zahir asked, trying to bring Abhijeet back to normal. He had been sitting in the café for last half an hour without having said a single word. He had a relatively shattering argument with Tanya.

“Dude, you must have heard, love is like a butterfly, as soft and gentle....”

“Cut that crap! Love is nothing but like a disease – ultimately you get sick of each other!” Abhijeet snapped back, interrupting Zahir who now looked like a kid whose favorite Mickey Mouse underwear was stolen.

“No, no my child!” Abhijeet and Zahir turned around in a jiffy to see whose amiable female voice was this. It was Rekha Auntie, wife of K.D. Uncle who was the owner of the cafe. She walked towards them followed by K.D. uncle. Not a very regular face at the cafe despite the fact that she owned the place, Rekha auntie was an extremely polite motherly figure.

Rekha Auntie – “I am not very good at similes, but I would definitely not call it a disease.”

K.D. Uncle – “Abhijeet, she is right. Come what may, I would say love is the most beautiful expression that a human heart can feel.”

He looked at Rekha Auntie with an assured and sanguine maturity and understanding.

Rekha Auntie – “Exactly! 40 years of togetherness and look at your uncle! He still sings for me in the morning, offers me to dance at our club parties and kisses me good night every day!”

K.D. Uncle – “Rekha you don’t have to tell all the details to these kids!” He said smiling coyly with a slight pink tint on his cheeks.

However they listened with rapt attention. Zahir pushed on a little, “Tell us Auntie, how it all started? How was it falling in love back then?”

Rekha Auntie – “Oh trust me it was as hectic and stressful as now. But life was much easier back then.” She said with nostalgia reflecting in her eyes and the disappointment of the changing times evident in her voice.

“We did not have Whatsapp to keep a tab on our lovers and there was plenty of personal space in our relationships.” K.D. Uncle contributed with a sarcastic smile.

“But we want to know how did your love story start?” Abhijeet interrupted again. He was in no mood of a lecture on Whatsapp and Facebook which played back home all day.

Rekha Auntie started like narrating a movie she had just seen. “Ah! It was in Delhi that we first met. Delhi, which was undergoing its major transformations, was being converted into a city which defied all logics. It was more of an organized chaos, an unlikely congregation of clashing architectural styles, few old Ambassador Cars and an era when private builders has just begun to promote large residential colonies. It was truly a time to fall in love.”

K.D. uncle, who had usually been secretive about his life, continued thereon, “It was my friend’s engagement party in a five star pub and Rekha was the girl’s friend. We met for the first time and exchanged a shy handshake. There was a spark, an instant connection such as a butterfly had transferred the pollens from my heart to hers in that handshake. We kept stealing courteous glances all through the evening and I managed to earn myself a meet over tea the next week by the end.”

Rekha Auntie smiled or rather blushed. “After a few meetings, we decided to catch the blockbuster movie Bobby in theatre. During the movie, I felt his hand brush against mine. If I close my eyes and try to recapture, it plays a clear audio visual – the dark theatre, my flowery-print long skirt, the warmth of his hand on mine and the happiness that was reflected in my broad smile. At the end of the movie, we did not talk much....”

K.D. Uncle interrupted her, “Yeah! By the way holding hands was a big deal back then. Now it is probably not even counted as a first step. But yeah, after the movie I did ask her out officially and we went to that amazing play at Siri Fort Auditorium.”

Rekha Auntie – “I did not confess my love to him...”

K.D. Uncle said teasingly, “Yeah, why don’t you tell them the condition you had?”

Abhijeet raised an eyebrow – “Condition? Rekha Auntie kept forth a condition?”

K.D. Uncle – “Absolutely! She was a graduate in the language of German and had asked me to say Ich liebe dich meine liebe fraulien in a flow, which literally translated to ‘I Love you my lovely lady’.”    

 Zahir – “So you did?”

Rekha Auntie – “The thorny journey of love was not so easy for us.”

K.D. Uncle gave Rekha Auntie an intense look and suddenly they both got serious. Rekha Auntie took a gulp of water and K.D. Uncle continued, “Rekha was a widow!”

Abhijeet and Zahir looked at them flabbergasted.

K.D. Uncle – “Marrying a widow was like rebuilding Rome in those times, and unfortunately I guess, even now it is. We were from totally different backgrounds. We had literally committed a sin falling in love. But one thing that we were sure of was that we had to live each day of the rest of our lives with each other and for me, I knew that I had to wake up to that voice till the last day of my life.”

Rekha Auntie looked at him, seemingly close to tears. She cleared her throat a little and carried forward, “We tried to convince our parents a lot. I had been married off at a very early and immature age and my first husband had abandoned me as he left for Australia forever. I was a little child and I kept waiting, only to receive a divorce paper a few months later.”

K.D. Uncle – “Our families were against us to the extent that they were ready to lock us up but not be together and that is when we had to take the decision.”

Abhijeet – “Then what did you do?”

K.D. Uncle – “We eloped!”

It was the second shock of the day for Abhijeet and Zahir. Rekha Auntie said, “The level of our understanding and trust that we beheld into each other was a treasure. The knack of knowing what the other is thinking without even the need of words, the longing to spend every minute with each other, the desperation to do something in life for the happiness and comfort of the other... all of this was enough for us to spend the rest of our lives.”

Abhijeet looked at K.D. Uncle – “So you just eloped and Rekha Auntie agreed to get married?”

Rekha auntie chose to answer, “He took me to his friend’s place. At night while we stood on the terrace, he went down on his knees and extracted a ring from his back pocket and said ‘willst du mich heiraten’ in a flow. It translated to ‘will you marry me’ and I simply had no reason to say a ‘no’ to the man who totally owned my soul and henceforth, together we climbed the ladder of life...”

Abhijeet, lost in thoughts, immediately took out his phone from his pocket and typed a text to Tanya, ‘I am sorry. I want to walk the thorny path of life with your hand in mine... ”

#Brownsworth

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