At the Zoo
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Rajan parked his motorcycle at the stand. As he swung his leg off the bike he glimpsed Chandani standing by the entrance. Her hair was pulled back to form a ponytail under her cap. Rajan secured his helmet firmly on the bike and straightened his hair with his hands, looking at the rear view mirror. He tucked his shirt and walked toward the rotating irn gates of the Central Zoo. He looked at her as he got closer. It was the first time he had actually seen her face to face. Her face was not elongated as he had imagined. Chandani had a rounder face and she was looking down at her feet.

"Hello," he mumbled.

She looked up and forced a smile. There were black spots underneath her eyes. She had the entrance tickets on her hands. They entered the zoo through the rotating gates. Rajan and his buddies used to frequent the zoo when they were kids. He was fond of the gates. They liked to swing on it till the attendant shouted them away. The clerk took the tickets, tore it in half and handed back the stubs to Chandani. She let them drop on the ground where there was a pile of spent ticket stubs.

Right by the entrance were the bird cages. Tiny birds of many different colors; clamouring and chirping. So many small birds. Green parakeets and greener bee-eaters, yellow birds of names Rajan did not even bothered to look, colorful birds all chirping and jumping and dashing at once. And wrapped with the confusion of the noise came the peculiar smell. The visitors who looked like they were from the countryside looked at the birds with casual interest as if they had seen it all before. A mother was pulling at her child who looked determined to take one of the parrots home. Then more birds. Magpies and sparrows..."Why do they have sparrows in the zoo? They are common," Rajan said as if to himself. They walked on in silence. The noise of the birds faded as they walked away from the cages. Chandani had her head slightly slanted downward towards the ground.

They found a bench near the antelopes and deer section. There was a throng of people gathered around a curious doe who had ventured away from the herd and towards the wall. A man lifted his son up in the air and said, "Can you see now? See that is a deer." The child looked amused but his sibling started crying and wanted to be lifted too. Rajan looked at the people herding near the doe and at the child crying to be lifted to see the deer behind the wall. "How many babies would you like to have?" he asked Chandani as they both sat down on the bench. She said nothing and sat herself delicately, not too close to Rajan. "I was kidding," Rajan laughed. The out-of-towners had continued on and the grounds was much quiter now that the child had stopped crying. There were some people paddling their boats on the pond across the grounds. Some kids were swinging on the swings. The sky was clear and the sun was just warm.

(contd...)

mG.

...

Rajan squinted at the sun and at the blue-green waters of the pond and looking back at Chandani said, "So, what's up?"
"I just wanted to talk with you."
"Let's talk then," Rajan said picking up a stalk of grass and rolling it between his thumb and the index finger. "So will you talk?" he asked. "You were the one who invited me here."
"You don't want to talk then?" she asked. She opened her handbag and took out a tissue and rubbed her face and forehead in slow strokes.
"I don't know. Depends on what we talk about," he said.
The kids had tired of the swing and were now running after each other in the ground in front of the bench they were sitting in. "So, come on now... I don't have time just to sit here in silence," Rajan said.
She looked at him and held her gaze. Rajan met her eye but he could not stand being looked at so intensely. He looked towards the kids who were still running. "The problem is that we hardly know each other. I mean, yes we have chatted on the phone but in person it's akward..." he said and looking back at her smiled foolishly.
"The only thing I did on the phone was cry," she said. "I don't know what came over me. I just could not help myself. I did not even know you. But I cried. Yeah like a baby."
"Were you in the kitchen when you called all those times?"
"No. Why?"
"I thought you were chopping onions." He made a sulky face, made a bawling noise and as if he were holding a knife in his hand he chopped the air.
"You..." she gigled.
He laughed.

(contd...)

mG.