Chweet nothings

The wind was frolicking around me like a playful puppy, snuggling in my open hair and blowing my tresses. I was laughing happily at the little girls in my street who were playing curious games of their own invention. I was in a particularly good mood today, like I had been on all the other days of last two months, much to the surprise and suspicion of my mother. I was going to the coffee shop across my street to meet an old friend of mine.

An old man who happened to want to cross the road like me, was waiting alongside. He also happened to think that I’m extremely pretty and that the ‘proud little tilt’ on my head suited me. At least that’s what he told me. I must’ve given him a frighten(ed)ingly contemptuous glance because he laughed very loudly and even told me that he was harmless. Taxicabs full of couples rolled by every minute. A man grinned at a flitting colleague, and she had smiled back at him.

“Did you notice that?”, the flirty old man asked me.

“Well, as a matter of absolute fact, I, as it were, didn’t.” I said curtly. He laughed again and rather loudly.

“You did and you turned pink, my lady”, he said.

I had, actually, even wobbled in my tracks. The sight of couples, especially shy-shy ones, did this to me, now a days, and I, who had begun to weave a rose-tinted romance, lost track of what the old man was saying.

When I finally broke off from the labyrinth of ‘his’ colourful reverie, I heard the old man, and it seemed like he had asked me something and that he was pretty interested in what I had got to say in reply.

“Eh?”, I asked almost suspiciously, now. I was starting to feel that he belonged to the kind of old men/men that believed, every damsel has a love story and that she was only too willing to waive the formalities in return for their ear and advice on matters of her love.

“Did this remind you of him?” he asked, barefacedly.

“I think this is perfectly unbecoming of you, Sir.” I said, irked by his rather cheeky manner and by the restraints of the modern traffic rules. Old men, even normal ones, scare me, anyway, and this one seemed particularly incorrigible.

“No.” I said as if to end the conversation and looked at the large traffic policeman in a way so as to suggest to the old man that it is perfectly foul to converse with a pretty girl at a signal point and that in a space of thirty seconds, I could end his silly fun.

Much to my chagrin, he continued “It did, it did” and somehow the manner in which he said this almost amused me and I smiled.

A little boy had just come, for alms. “Get away,” the old man said. I stopped the boy, ruffled his hair, gave him a twenty rupee note, bought for him a heart-shaped balloon, and two of them for myself.

I waved the balloons at the old man. “It did, it did and thanks for noticing”, I said and I ran off aimlessly, sprightly like in a world of springtime and flowers and laughing brooks, in spite of 8 seconds remaining on the traffic light timer..