Time is the ultimate winner, the king and the master. Time never stops and never turns back. Be it a moment or a millennium. Millennia are made of moments, and in front of some special moments, millennia stay dim.
This is a story of such special moments.
She was tired, after a heavy morning, an abusive morning. Her cheek still smarted from the slap of her husband who was angry because she did not earn enough. Her hands felt leaden, her nerves screamed from the agony of being stretched through the night, when she carried her young sick son, in her arms to keep him quiet so her husband could sleep in peace. Her head reeled under the weight of the basket of brooms. She felt faint. So she stopped at the bottom of the stairwell for a minute and leaned against the edge.
Amit and Anin were standing at the top of the stairwell on the 12th floor, smoking. They were dropping cigarette ash down the stairwell and admiring Amit’s new mobile. The mobile had a camera, touch screen etc., the works!! Amit felt that it was worth every pie of his six months worth savings he pumped into buying it.
All of a sudden and oh all of a sudden, the mobile slipped out of Anin’s hands and fell not on the stairs but into the stairwell. For a split second, they were too shocked to react. Then Amit started screaming. He was wild and livid to put it mildly. Anin ran to the lift. Amit ran after him blindly like a mad man. Thankfully for both of them, and the lift was there on the twelfth floor. They raced into the lift.
The moments when the lift descended to the ground floor were the worst and the longest ones in Anin’s life. Amit was screaming and begging him to undo the moment when he dropped the mobile. He felt like the scum of the Earth. He wished he had never touched the blasted phone.
The moment the lift reached the basement and the doors opened, the duo raced out to the bottom of the stairwell. They were too scared to imagine the sight that might await them there.
They were shocked!! There was not even a single speck that could remotely resemble a broken splinter of a mobile there. It was almost as if Amit’s mobile fell and disintegrated into invisible pieces. They started running around in circles, trying to find something - anything in fact. Suddenly they heard a voice asking them in the vernacular – “Sir, are you looking for something?” “His mobile it fell down the stairwell. Did you see it”? Anin responded mechanically without looking up. “Is it this one sir”? she asked. Amit looked up and exclaimed – “Where? How? How”? He was stunned because it was his phone and it was intact!! “It fell into my basket sir. Luckily I sell broomsticks. If my basket had something hard, it would have got broken” she replied to his unasked question.
Amit ran to her and grabbed his phone eagerly and busied himself examining it. Anin looked at Amit with the mobile in his hands behaving like a small child who found his favorite toy in his crib after looking for it all over the house. He then turned towards her and looked at her for the first time, the woman who saved his friend and friendship. Impulsively he ran to her, hugged her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She felt like an angel who had just handed over manna to him. She looked a picture of perfection, like the goddess of beauty.
The moment of impulse followed by many moments of embarrassment, which combined statements of outrage by the woman, apologies and self reproaches by Anin. Apologies, expressions of gratitude and offerings of money by Amit, her refusal and finally ended in those minutes when the duo ran into the lift to go back to their office and talk about their experience.
When the duo were finally in the lift, and after the doors of the lift closed, she quietly lifted the basket, kept it on her head and started walking. After she took four steps, her fingers touched the part of the cheek where she was kissed. There was a wistful smile on her lips.
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