“Ishq Salaam e...”

Well, she did go back home or so I hear... She is there now waiting for the next big event of her life. She hopes it doesn’t take long. She has a few ideas of dreams here and there, everywhere. Ideas that make her travel far away again... When she is back from her imaginary trips she wonders why they can’t come true yet, or will they ever... She gets up and dances to the song “Ishq Salaam e...” and it is just her and that very present moment, very real, no dreams, no imaginary anything... The song, the dance, the rhythm and all that is around her... Is she going home for long? Is she leaving for somewhere I know, where I have been before, so I could give her some advice this time around? Is she still going to take all her baggage and extra baggage? Is she taking me, her full heart? What’s her story going to be like when I hear from her again...

Meanwhile, I sit here imagining her deep green eyes, the magic around her that intoxicates me, her little steps back and forth following the song, her arms moving as waves... Her smile... Is that smile for real? Oh I remember her loud laughs and screams of desperation... so dramatic like a character that could never exist inside someone’s normal mind... It must be some character of a schizophrenic mind, I’d think if I hadn’t met her one day.

It was raining the day when I first met her. She was running outside the coffee shop, laughing and crying at the same time, jumping up and down. She wore boots and played with puddles! I couldn’t stop watching her. Perhaps she was dancing to "Ishq Salaam e" under the rain, in the middle of the streets, not fearing the cars... Perhaps she was even singing out loud, as if no one was watching her right on Bond Street. She got inside carrying all the rain with her, dripping from hair to toe. She ordered a very large cup of cold iced coffee as if she was burning inside. I thought it must have been the Ishq Salaam e Ishq inside her, until I noticed a bit of sadness in her eyes which she perhaps tried to hide. Smiling a fake smile, she looked at me for the first time.

I felt a bit uncomfortable at first, wondered whether she was in fact looking at me or the couple sitting behind me. She walked towards my table and asked “Is it alright if I sit here?” with her cheeks blushing a bit from the fire inside her, ‘cause it could not be of shame. I simply nodded and she took a seat in front of me. I wanted to say something, but I guess I just stared instead... she asked me if I liked her earrings. And I said “yes, that is what I was just looking at.”
“I got them in Mikonos because they matched the hat I was wearing on the occasion.” She replied.
“Oh so you’ve been to the Greek Islands before?” I inquired hoping to hear an amazing story. And that’s when she burst into a loud laugh.
“Greek Islands? With the blue seas and Greek gods, like paradise, like so blue that you can mix sea with skies? No, only for those 5 minutes it took to purchase the earrings.” I am not sure till now what that meant.

She seems to be back home and I am hoping for her to find her true home this time. Settle down somewhere because I believe that is what she deeply wishes for when I heard her heartbeats. As if her heartbeats were almost scared to beat their full beat. As if her lungs were almost afraid to breathe fully. Well, you get it, as if something was truly missing despite the whole scenario in which she lives... It may rain in every colour and an orchestra may follow her all day, and nights or days may be longer according to her scenes and feelings. But in the end of every story of hers, the last sigh means: “I haven’t found it yet.”