Sweet Tandem

We wandered the boiling streets of Mumbai with brows all wet with sweat; as our feet brushed the gravel making sounds of rain. I sat under the shade of the young, empty, naked tenement while you, stubborn as always, stood in front of me.

“Sit”

You sat beside me; we flicked the sweat off our foreheads with our thumbs in unison and chuckled as empty eyes and melancholy silence prefaced the conversation that will never happen.

I moved my fingers along the cylindrical outline of my breast pocket, removed the cigarette within and placing it in the corner of my lips; I lit and inhaled in broken breaths. As the sad, pathetic smoke lumped up in my throat; I exhaled in rhythm of an old motorcycle.

You fiddled with sticks and pebbles on ground and picking them up, threw them in the street and did it again, and again, and then again; as if in competition with yourself.

“Pch !”

Oh, how you get on my nerves without saying a word you beautiful creature, you devil in smooth disguise. The cigarette passed between us puffing once or twice and back to me; and then, to you; and then, back to me again. Quite possibly, the only thing we did or could do together in tandem; in sweet tandem.