Encounter in the coffee house

She said ‘go’
And he mistook it to be a ‘no’.

… and so this was why he kept on sitting right opposite her in that nearly empty coffee house in Connaught Place that evening. She now seemed confused and probably thought it to be arrogance and took it to be a willful attempt to irritate her… this is what I guessed as I had just come in and sat there a few tables away watching them.

I had heard a clearly resounding GO and had quickly jotted on my iPad:

Another couple is about to part
I wonder if the drama ended or about to start?

Watching people is always fun and making guesses about what is happening or what is about to happen is also fun… but I find it infinitely exciting to convert such sudden encounters into rhyming couplets and see late if they all come together as a unified poem.

‘Interesting,’ you just might mutter as you read this post, and maybe resolve to try out this little experiment someday. If you do it, you love it, is all I can add. But let me get back to this little encounter in the coffee house.

She sat there in a puddle of silent anger
I could sense explosive danger!

They sat there in silence and then she asked, ‘Now what?’

‘Should I order something to eat? Another round of hot coffee to follow?’ he asked a bit hesitatingly.

‘And what do we do sitting here?” she said, ‘what do we actually talk about?’

Two people together and yet alone
Is so like a marble pretending to look like a cone!

And when this happens, one must change
Or get up and simply disengage.

I was now slightly eager to know what was really happening between the two who seemed to be together and yet one wanted the other to go. The girl hadn’t raised an alarm nor her voice… she was also in no apparent hurry to create a scene nor did she even wanted the young man to actually get up and go. Then why in blazes did she ask him to go? The answer that I sought did not take long to make its appearance.

The young man asked a rather surprising question, ‘Chalk? Why would you want a chalk here? Today is a Sunday and you aren’t in your class, teaching.’ Saying this he guffawed and had this happened in the virtual world, someone would surely have written rofl or lol or some such acronym. But the girl stared at him with an incredulous look and said, ‘Which virus has struck you today? When did ask you to get me chalk?’

She then asked the waiter to get her a piece of paper and wrote on it: ‘I don’t need a chalk.’ She then held this piece of paper aloft so he could see and read what was written. He smiled and said, ‘Ok. This is precisely what I was saying. You don’t need a chalk here today.’

She suddenly leaned forward and seemed to examine his ears. Even I was taken aback at this and thought for a moment that this confusion was caused by that technological monstrosity called a Bluetooth headset device that some people still use. This could be the reason for all this misunderstanding, I thought and smiled to myself as I wrote:

Or just try to see what isn’t visible
Most tussles happen dues to the invisible.

But she simply extracted a pair of ear-plugs from the young man’s ears and said, ‘I knew it had to be something silly that was making you behave silly.’

‘Was I being silly?’ he asked.

‘Were you being silly?’ she repeated in a tone that had disbelief laced with a controlled dose of laughter, ‘you almost succeeded in making me think you had gone bonkers. When you said you had an important blogging assignment to complete and I asked you to go, you kept on sitting. Isn’t that silly?’

The young man was silent for a few minutes and then said slowly, ‘You said go? I thought you said no. So I kept sitting thin king you wanted to discuss something important. But I was genuinely taken aback when you wanted a few chalks.’

‘Ah! That was what gave you away,’ she replied, ‘I knew then that you might still be going around with those ear-plugs that you had inserted in your ears last night to protect you from that jagran.’

They smiled, paid their dues, and walked out without any nagging rancour. I too compiled my poem adding another stanza…

Encounter in the coffee house

She said ‘go’
And he mistook it to be a ‘no’.

Another couple is about to part
I wonder if the drama ended or about to start?

She sat there in a puddle of silent anger
I could sense explosive danger!

Two people together and yet alone
Is so like a marble pretending to look like a cone!

And when this happens, one must change
Or get up and simply disengage.

Or just try to see what isn’t visible
Most tussles happen dues to the invisible. 

But truth is even more than what you can see
And perceptions have the power to sting like a bee!

I too walked out of the coffee house that evening, richer by a few stanzas of a new sort of realization.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda

Arvind Passey
06 October 2013