It was a long hard day, and for once he had really felt his age. Cairo’s hot sun hadn’t helped, and by the time he was home, it felt as if he had been through a wringer. But all thought of age and pain, disappeared when he entered the parlor and found her there.
She sat with a cup of tea, in a pale pink saree, and one of those high collared blouses she’d taken to wearing now, her hair once hip length, was in a fashionable bob, and in many ways Vi looked different today, from the 19 year old he had fallen in love with. But she still made him laugh, and feel he was still that dashing 31-year-old. In many ways, despite the years, and the parting and bitterness, no, there had been no bitterness towards her ever, he still loved her.
“Tea?” she asked.
“Yes, and some of those biscuits I know are always in your bag.”
She laughed and gestured to a plate already filled with biscuits. Tea, a usually a humdrum event, was today full of gossip, and plans, and memories.
He had met her first when she was 19, and then again when she was 50. And she hadn’t changed. And she had still loved him too.
He knew that what had been done to them was unfair, and wrong, but he had learnt to live in the moment. The moments in America had been plentiful, and now in Cairo, she did keep dropping in.
Next morning, as they ate breakfast in bed, his help had learnt to make hers as precisely as they did his, he said, “And then when again?”
“Soon” was her only reply.
But the next time Vi came to Cairo, it would be to lay white roses at his tomb, along with the tears that now were too plentiful to count.
Sruti Sagaram 