Smog……

“I am off to the morning walk aunty!” He called over his shoulder.

“Why do you need to wander in this chill outside, look at the fog, you would not see someone near your nose!” She called back.

He didn’t stop to listen to her comments, clanked the bungalow gate shut and off he went. Even as he began tracing his footsteps into the white oblivion, he could not help but listen to his aunt complaining to his uncle and his uncle advising her to let the boy lead his life as he wants it. He wondered whether he had any microphones plugged somewhere in the house. His years of association with his only ‘family’ had made him rehearse even what was said behind him. The people loved him; only failed to show it at the right time. Nevertheless he carried on with his tread.

His present morning walk was far from wandering. He had a purpose, a driving force that pulled him in these freaking, sub-normal temperatures; out the cosy little bedroom and the subtle warmth of his quilt. He checked his upper t-shirt pocket and felt the bulge. Satisfied that he had not forgotten, he marched past waking roosters, dogs lying succumbed to the utter cold, birdies woken & chattering meekly with their tiny beaks. He wondered whether the animal kingdom too suffers from cold, or is only the humankind subjected to such ‘cruelty!’

As he approached his destination, he caught glimpse of the figure standing far away beside the old ruin of a monument. The place was a bit on the outside of town and was quite lonely at this time. The sun was not even out of its nightly shadows and yet the slender figure was standing there gazing skywards. As he neared the ruin, he noticed that the figure was that of a young lady, maybe in her mid-twenties. Even in that petty light, he saw she was wearing the usual, white coloured Salwar-kameez, with a faint beige-coloured shawl, wrapped tightly across her body. She was clearly waiting there for somebody.

She turned, to reveal a beautiful face, with an innocent yet mesmerizing frankness. The lips, bright pink as they were, glowed in the wake of the pristine visage. Even as the sun shone its first rays on her, the sudden light made her eyelashes flutter revealing the deep blue eyes it protected. She smiled a smile of knowing as he walked towards her with eager gait.

“Well” he said, “Yet another bountiful morning!”

She looked at him as he stood beside her; witnessing the glorious light emitting from the single largest source known. “How are you?” she asked with ease.

“I am good. Tell me, How is it that you always come here before me, I have tried beating you to it, but I have failed; always.” He added as an afterthought.

“Maybe it is the eagerness that brings me here before you!” she retorted quickly.

“Eagerness for what? Meeting me, or the sun?”

Her reply was merely a smile. “Tell me what are you made up of? I bet it is something very unusual.” He asked out of sheer curiosity.

“Yup! You bet right. I am made up of chilling fog & smoke – pretty warm smoke at that!”

“’Smog’ is the word you want!” he laughed at her cunning. She would never reveal herself.

“I have always wanted to ask you a question,” he said with some audacity and more of a hope, “What might your name be? Pray tell.” He added.

For the first time she replied without a pause, “Its Mitra…!”

“Mitra! Meaning ‘friend’?”

“Yes, A friend in need…”

“Indeed!” he exclaimed. “You come here daily just because you know I…….

“Feel lonely,” she completed his words. “I know something about you, all of your history, some of your biology and much of your literature. I know you love to smoke when aloof and alone. Shall I tell you something; what you feel is not true, you are not alone.”

“Alone for eternity – right after my birth, this proves you don’t know me after all.” He said with some dignity. “If you say, I am not alone, where are you when I am lost during the day and in the scary torture of the night, searching for solace? True! Work gives solace, poetry does too, but they have their limitations, what about the whole life? Will you be there?”

“I am Omni-existent. The thing is, you fail to recognise me, after all I am in your thoughts, I am your thoughts, to be precise.” He noticed her shiver as a gust of wind tried to blow her shawl away. She clinched it even tighter around herself. “Now if I ask you to come with me into this thick mist, will you?”

“I have people at home. I can’t.” He said.

“And then you say you are alone, do your own words go together?” She gave him yet another of her subtle looks, held his hand amidst her cold-reddened palms, turned and started to go. She went a few steps into the now thinning fog as he watched her going, and gradually she was gone; like smoke.

---

He thoughtfully took out the cigarette pack from his pocket. Suddenly a thought struck him. “What gave more warmth, this cigarette smoke or her palms which were made of nothing but warm ‘smoke’?” Grinning to himself he threw the cigarette away just as he heard people behind walking along the path. He thought he heard them saying, “That guy there is surely out of his senses, why would he talk to the air otherwise?”

He did not pay any heed to those words. After all, he loved the fog, the ‘smog’ and then he ‘loved’…………