She Makes A Sign

She Makes A Sign
She gave me a smile when she saw me. I wasn’t sure if it was merely a formality or did it mean something more than that. Practically, I didn’t care, it didn’t matter, and it wasn’t important at that time. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions; I’d grown beyond the stage when one falls in head-over-heels in love with someone merely because someone smiled at me.



She was quite good looking, she looked quite young and vibrant, and yet she looked at me with a typical affection in her eyes. her eyes were piercing through me like a laser-sharp knife slices through a mango, and it was done in a jiffy. I began to see her on an elevated platform with my changed vision. I equated her with Erotes, the Greek goddess of love without her fabled wings. I  wish I had wings to fly to her side.



 I was ready to prostrate before the goddess of love, although I knew nothing about her. She might be a passenger on a train leaving the platform, she might have arrived on a train, or she may be on the platform to bid adieu to someone or even to receive someone. She might leave the platform aboard a train in a few moments or she might be waiting for a someone to accompany her to a home in the city. I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t want to be.



What mattered at that time was that she had looked at me, smiled at me, and she was quite good-looking. She had given me attention, and I had been pining for some. I never expected it to come from a complete stranger in such a setting.



I didn’t know anything about her except that she was quite good looking and was looking at me. I felt honoured by the attention. I had been pining for feminine attention, and here it was. A few dregs of it from someone I didn’t know was really a big surprise for me. 



I wonder if she wanted to know anything more about me than what was obvious at her first glance. For my part, I didn’t want to. I wanted her to keep looking at me. I wanted to keep looking at her for a longer time. I wanted to enjoy all the attention she could possibly give me at  that time. This wasn’t the first time I was getting attention from a fair quarter, but this was the first time when I was getting it from someone so good-looking.



I wonder if she found me as good-looking. I really didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. She gave me some amount of attention, and it was all that counted. It bore a deep hole into my being. It ignited a flame within me. I wanted to enjoy all of it. She prepared to rise from her  seat and follow someone leaving the gathering, and my heart skipped a beat. Here were some of the most beautiful moments of my life running away from my present, and I couldn’t do anything to hold them together.



A stronger adhesive than Fevicol was probably needed to bind these two ends together. For a while, I wanted to walk up to her and talk to her, but I was reminded of the impracticality of my resolve the very next moment. Talking to strangers has never been my purview.



To this day, I wonder if her smile meant anything more than a formal well- wishing gesture. I will never know.