Spring on my mind

I see a man walking ahead of me tired with the day’s work but hopeful that he is on his way home. I wondered what that faint smile on his face meant. Did it mean he was going home to his family or did he live alone? The smile could be remembering a funny thing that happened at work today. Or just in the mere presence of the cherry blossoms that had bloomed in full grandour and pomp. That is when I realised I was walking a long, as far as the eyes can reach sort of canopy of these delicate pink flowers. These flowers symbolize a deeper meaning especially as a metaphor of life. This blooming does not exist forever and its a matter of weeks before the drop down and are out of our lives for a long time. We, humans too do not realise that every moment of our breath is fleeting and it slips away from our hands and we can never capture it. Even so, being the millenial that I was, I knew that I could capture it with a photograph. This would now be my fifteenth picture of the cherry blossoms this week. How often had I come to see them? Why did they feel renewed every time I saw them? Was it because the wind slightly adjusts it a bit to either side like we change our hairstyles by parting our hair to either side?

Giggling to myself as I think abut this comparison, I hear some voices giggling not too far away from me. A bunch of college graduates posing for natural background before having to go to their hall for the ceremony. Laughing and talking away their months of hard work with this sort of reward. I am asked to take a picture which I agree to reluctantly not because I am not happy for them. It has more to do with me and how I too would have been enjoying and laughing and talking with my friends a few days before for a similar graduation ceremony but I did not clear my exams. This laughter and posing was not for me to enjoy. I click some snaps and I quickly make myself scarce.

Maybe , that is why I find myself walking through these amazing flower studded pathways and keep seeing them differently. Once you get hit, you start noticing the few good things you still have. That is an amazing way a human mind works, You are unhappy but you find ways to make yourself happy. It is nice to feel happy, you know. The feeling you get when your heart feels so full and you feel like it is going to explode but you want to contain it for as long as you can. The fun part about these tiny flowered trees is that they are available in humongous quantities as far as your eyes can see. It just makes you happy for as far as you can see.

There is a small turn in this large park which would lead me away from the trees and I did not want that but also there was lots of free space to walk. Believe it not, people were mostly waking under this umbrella of pink gentleness which is obviously a calming presence. I take the turn because I would actually prefer some solitude. That is one thing about growing up, you value being with yourself so much. Without the shade of the flowers, I am suddenly aware of what is happening around me on a larger periphery.

My music was pretty loud for such a quiet day around me or its quieter now that I am walking away from people. Quite adhering to the cliche, my phone was playing ‘Colours of the Wind’ in my ears. I smile with nose flaring just a tiny bit. I have a larger than life fear of dogs. And I see one Golden Retriever charging towards me. Now the thing you need to pay attention to is that I start noticing the dog’s expressions. Yes you read that right-its expressions. This is what I gauge so far and now I write from the dog’s point of view according to me. “Is that a friendly human right there? I should go right now to say hi! Or wait, is that the same bad human who was seen shooing me with a stick to scare me? Why is the human looking at me like I am crazy? Why does the human feel like they are going to jump to the side? Or maybe they are running like I do and many others who do that early in the morning and sometimes later in the evening? End of dog’s point of view according to me.

The dog slows down and gives me a friendly wag and is on its way. I am covered in sweat. This was not what I signed up for today. I had already done my exercise and I did not need to break into it again. But thank the universe for putting some sense into the dog. I start walking like everything is as perfect as it should be. Its been a long time since I have been walking and this adrenaline of the dog approaching made me tired. I found a bench and I sit and now the songs are not playing anymore and I do not need the songs and I have not for a while. I am looking at this beautiful spring magic all around me and I dont need songs to entertain me further.

It marks one year that we made the promise. One promise that I intended to keep. I met him when I had just begun my course and he was a senior. That is a pretty common love story, right? Although, I am not sure if this was even a love story. It was that one eventful day when I met James. He was presumably working at the castle where I went to visit since this was my first solo living abroad. He was a handsome fella and he was quirky. I saw him while the tour happened and I was obsessed with his ways to handle the radio transceiver or the walkie talkie as it is called commonly. He kept it tugged onto his shirt close to the face was press the button and talk. I kept hoping that I run into him while I leave but I kept seeing him a couple of times after that.

While I was done with the tour of the castle, I managed to find him and by now, he recognized my face and gave a full smile. I told him how cool I thought his way of using the walkie talkie was and he just smiled again. He slipped me a note which said ‘Meet me in the park on the bench that reads True Love Lusts Forever and we laughed about that. We are ready for our date. He is waiting for me at the bench and we take a tour of the entire city and he tells me all these cool, never-heard things about the city. He told me had to leave soon because he was broke and he could not stay back even if he wanted to. I feel bad but I could not tell him that because I barely knew him.

We said our goodbyes on a bench with fully blossomed cherry trees and perfect moonlit night. It was an awkward goodbye because it should not mean so much but it did and I felt the pull between my practical and weird, romantic mind. We talked for hours about everything under the moon- how we both thought babies dressed as adults were creepy or tried predicting when the apocalypse would occur. That was the night I realised there were more weirdos like me. It was time to go home and he asked me to meet him a year later on the same bench if I wanted to see him again.

I guess I can confide in you why I took that turn, it was not totally spontaneous and it was not because there were fewer people there. It was because I was curious; curious of this sort of doomed loved story that I tragically tried not believing in. But then again, here I was, sitting and waiting for this to be true. I see someone approaching the bench. My heartbeats are beating so hard and so fast that my throat is dry and all I want is some water and some of James. The faraway silhouette is now a definite person and it looks like him and he is smiling. He approaches me and I feel my nervousness build to excitement and there are even tears welling up.

I look at him and he smiles and we hug for what seems like a long time. He looks and smells just the same. I keep longing for his contact and I slide my hands from his back to when we were hugging and now they are holding his hands. He is wearing the exact same clothes as what he wore a year ago. He also has the exact same scar he had a year ago. He also had the same twig stuck in his hair like the one he had a year ago. I started to join the dots slowly and I realised what was happening. I was looking for a love story with someone who was not part of the earth. He just smiled at me and help up my chin with his hands and leaned forward to kiss me. I knew this was the last thing I should be doing, the absolute last but I did not care and I kissed him back. The cherry flowers were now ebbing behind us and all I wished for this instance that someone took a photo to capture this moment.