Mysterious Women....part 2

.....carrying forward from part 1.

She moved towards, the third floor stairs and I followed behind.....after reaching the third floor...........she turned towards..........the stairs leading to terrace. I had ruled out that possibility already given her fear of darkness......and she was going towards the terrace. It was a half moon night and light cool sea breeze was adding to the darkness of the terrace. I followed behind her with hushed footsteps. I was sure, there would be someone else too......... She moved to the farther end of terrace and was looked towards the back side, from the terrace boundary. Behind our building was a hostel of an Indian IT major. My imagination was running overtime...and again and again telling me there would be some boyfriend coming to meet her - if not from within our building, then maybe from the IT company's hostel. I knew my chance was slipping but i stood there, in the darkness, behind a pillar......to find out, who is the one for whom, she had overcome her fear of darkness and come upto the terrace. 10 mins passed by.......and nobody came...she was still standing facing the other side, looking over to the horizon.........20 mins and still nobody came. Now I was getting restless. When you are waiting in dark, and mosquitoes are tasting your sweet blood, without any disturbance......as you can't make any noise.....its tough.

After around 30 minutes of wait, i heard some sound............i knew...........this was the moment........somebody appears to be coming. wait........this is a different sound..........somebody is crying........but who?........what a dumb question ! it was two of us on the terrace and i wasn't crying, so it has to be her.........the mysterious lady. It was a silent sob only.........but I could not stop myself and approached her. She was startled to see me at first and then her tactful self took over - she said, " Isn't this evening sea breeze so nice. I love coming to here" but even in that darkness, for the first time, i could see that her words were not giving support to her voice. Next, she was talking about some prof. / assignments..........what i could hear though was the pain and turbulence in her voice. In this moment of revelation, i was able to see beyond her tact and words. " Why were you crying?" , I asked in a very demanding voice. I never understood, how i asked that question to her.

She tried to laugh it away, negating my observation. Had it been any other day, I would have believed her but today, I was believing myself and i again demanded, " why were you crying". She reminded me of time and said,"Move to dinner, or else you'll miss the hot chapatis". Cold Chapatis was my sore area of concern in the mess, but chapatis was not what was on my mind right now. I told her, either to come with me or I too am not going. The verbal tussle, continued till some time and ended in a eerie silence. We both were standing bend over the terrace boundary wall, looking over to horizon and no word was spoken for 15 minutes.......

She finally brike the silence, asking me again to leave her alone there and before I could speak anything.......she broke down into tears. I wanted to console her and lend her my shoulders. She cried and cried till I could feel my shirt becoming wet at shoulders. She was holding my hands tightly......and then she spoke.

******** the conversation that happened than between us lasted for almost 3 hours. The content of that discussion is personal, so not to be written / discussed ***********

That day and both our lives changed. That day i realised the power of love - which can make people see and do, what in normal circumstances is unthinkable. 20 months after that day...........we two got engaged and 6 more months down, we got married. Today that mysterious women is my wife - my best friend.