‘Stay safe, stay home’. The new anchor closed his primetime show as Tara stood in the corner, waiting for me to notice.
‘You seem lost, Ryan’, Tara asked.
‘There is too much commotion outside. Some call out for war, a ban of sorts while the rest continue their business, as usual, forgetting about what pandemic we are into. It’s just hopeless…you know that uncle who lives opposite to us, I saw him eating momos on the roadside…can you really believe that, how can someone be so careless. Trust me it is because of these people…’
‘Stop. You have started to speak like that anchor now’, she interjected as she walked towards the balcony.
‘So no coffee for me?’, I asked.
‘If you could take the effort to notice. Its right there’, pointing towards the table outside, in the balcony.
‘Do you know what date it is?’
‘Did I forget something?’, I replied as I tried recollecting all the important dates, starting with Tara’s birthday.
‘I didn’t miss anything.’
She remained affixed, lost into the night sky.
‘We were supposed to be in Tawang, today’, she replied.
‘Please don’t start ranting about the virus’, she added.
‘Okay, I wasn’t anyway’, I replied as I wondered about all the governance hiccups that the States and the Centre were committing to.
‘You’re still thinking, aren’t you?’ she whispered as she walked away.
‘Okay wait! Tell me what do you want me to do.’
‘Three things’
‘All planned out. Am I being trapped?’ I smiled as I sat next to her on the sofa.
‘Not helping’, she replied with a straight face.
‘Okay go on!’
‘Fine. Firstly, let’s find a date in December where we could take this pending trip of ours.’
‘But the virus?’, I replied with a sense of disbelief.
‘At least this would keep the hope alive. Do it. Block your schedule now’, she exclaimed.
‘Okay done. What next?’
‘I am hungry. Go make some dim sums. I want to at least feel that I am there.’
‘Sophistication. You’re being truly an HR!’
I paused for a moment as I turned towards her with a sudden sense of clarity about what was going on, ‘You could have directly told me that I was cooking tonight. I would have done that.’
‘It’s not like that, it’s about hope, you see.’ she replied as she tried hard to control her laughter.
‘Acha, tell me what was the third thing?’
‘Third thing, did I say three, wasn’t it two?’, she said as she fell down from the sofa laughing.
I joined in as I pulled her closer and asked, ‘When was this masterplan framed?’.
‘Right when you told about that uncle eating momos’.
‘Dim sums’, I corrected as we burst out laughing.
Fin.
#TaraRyan
rroopeshkumar 