EYES ALONE SPEAK

There was a knock on the glass pane of my latest obsession, a Maruti Suzuki 800. I quarter spinned my head and found myself looking into the eyes of someone I used to imagine as an angel while mom narrated fairytales to me and my sister during childhood days. This angelic girl, had an aura, I guess, and her eyes, as if reflecting everything under the sun, were slightly moistened which made them extraordinarily glisten .

I unwound the pane handle to lower it and she smiled. Her smile came in as a broom that swept my mind clean. I looked and looked into her eyes until the traffic jam allowed me to.

‘Ma’am, do you need one?’ Her voice came, slightly extending a hand that firmly held a bunch of individual flowers. Those flowers lay in her hand graciously, each outstanding the other. But none had succeeded in blooming more than the little girl’s face.

I didn’t know why the hell did I need a flower.

‘Sure, little angel. Give me the pink one.’

‘That’s so nice of you’ beamed her sweet voice amidst the deafening motor horns.

My phone buzzed and it was real world again. I could hear mom’s voices muffled by her tears trying to convey something. I then sensed the receiver switch over and a male voice said ‘ Priya has met with an accident. Come to TTC hospital at the earliest’.

The line went off and off began spinning everything around me. Priya, my twin, my world, ever connected to me, so much so that, the umbilical cord that branched from the same root to us was still virtually present, no matter how physically distant we were.

The traffic cleared all of a sudden. How I wish that every problem in life got cleared the same way!

The girl dropped the pink flower on my lap and I drove away without paying her her much awaited income.

I was standing beside Priya in the ICU. Entangled amongst pumping tubes, monitoring wires and beeping machines lay the very part of my life. Even my tears were grief- stricken, unable to move down.

‘I love you Priya’ I said.

I sat beside her, closed my eyes and called the divine power to our aid. Only me and Priya in the room and it felt like mothers womb, with the same amniotic fluid surrounding us, perhaps, the fluid had begun some kind of replenishment.

I felt a touch.

It had to be Priya’s. And yes, it was her.

She tried opening her eyes but was putting in more efforts to speak through her oxygen mask. She gestured to remove the mask. I did. She took my hand and pressed hers against mine. I could sense the numbness in them.

‘I wish to donate my eyes Neeta’ she said slowly.

‘How are you gonna see then?’ I said trying to joke out her words.

‘You’ll have to do it for me…’

The monitoring display changed its pattern. And the pattern of my life also changed from the very next moment. She was gone, leaving behind a vivid trail of unforgettable memories.

I don’t remember about the hours that passed but I was driving back home alone when again I got jammed in a traffic block.

‘Aisha………’

I turned around and found a woman, in her fifties, call out to someone. I don’t know what made me curious to find out who Aisha was. I struggled to see and it was the angel, this time her other hand, the one without flowers, had a walking stick that guided her through her way.

She had smiled at me, looking into my eyes. She had neatly picked out the pink flower to give it to me. How could she be blind??

She hugged the old woman and they both headed towards the other side of the road.

‘I wish to donate my eyes Neeta……. You’ll have to do it for me……’

I’ll have to do it.

I parked the car sideways and followed the girl. I hardly knew her. But the Priya part in me knew her.

I interrogated about her to find out that she was an orphan, or rather abandoned to live as an orphan and was taken care of by a generous old street-vendor couple.

I looked into Aisha’s eyes and she smiled again.

‘ It’s not how how life acts but how we react to life’s actions that makes our being worth’. Priya had once told.

I decided, she’ll see the world through Priya’s eyes. I drove back to TTC hospital and made the necessary arrangements.

………….. She struggled to open her eyes, a struggle much easier than her life. She half opened them, looked at me and smiled. I smiled back , I saw Priya in her….

Yes.. Priya had, in true sense, become an angel in paradise.