Streetlights in Winter (standard:Psychological fiction, 2339 words)
Author: sayan	Added: Aug 01 2004	Views/Reads: 3614/2297	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Based on a true story. The rest is poetry and imagination.

“...Yes now, Ok, Bye, see you sir”......, then she gently kept the
phone, and went out of the room singing to herself. “Mom, I'm going 
out, back at night”. “.... You, are.....” said the alleged mother after 
a pause, and a big smile slowly stretching out on her face, “then do 
take your....”. The door slammed shut with a thud. In the brief period 
it was open, the continuous humming of rain could be heard from inside 
the house. 

Dearest Akash, my love Last night I couldn't stop thinking, so I
couldn't sleep a wink. Some sad old things made me cry again, you know 
those. I took three of those pills Arpita gave me and finally slept at 
5a.m. A sweet dream of our love filled me so deeply that I had to get 
up and write to you, though its just 8 in the morning. Anywho its been 
raining since the last three days, and I couldn't go out of the house. 
First day I was ‘down' so didn't really care, but you know, now I just 
can't stop (I'm smiling!!) . Yesterday I read “The Inscrutable 
Americans” by Anurag Mathur and u know I just loved it. Its about this 
Indian boy from a village, who never touched meat or dreamt about 
kissing a girl, going to America for a year and being transformed into 
a drunk sex maniac of some sort. It's so sweetly written! Read it when 
u come back, it's beautiful. Anyway sir called today to ask when I 
could join again, and I said, “today itself, I feel perfect”. You know 
sir said, “ok-oh but its raining now... are you sure you're alright” 
after a really really long pause and kept the phone. Anyway did you 
hear Arpita's going back to her ‘x'. More on that later. I'm in the lab 
right now.  I just miss u sooooo much honey, I just pray this month is 
over soon and u can get a break and come here for a few weeks. Till 
then in dreams. Write back soon, Miss u, bye, with love Your Sonia, 
P.S. – I'm not angry anymore, and I'm taking the meds at the right 
times, so don worry at all. After an indent of 2 lines the screen read 
On 12th July 2003 Akash wrote.. 

She turned back, as if to see if any one else was reading her e-mail,
finding just the neon lights reflected from newly painted walls and 
yellow gray diffused sunlight of a rainy day entering the room, she 
turned back and quickly clicked ‘Send', and closed her mail box. 
Apparently she was in a hurry. While entering the building, painted in 
a shade of light yellow, which she occasionally found to be the dullest 
shade of the spectrum, chosen specifically by a committee after two 
month long research aimed at making her work place a little more dull 
and boring, she had to run across a corridor connecting the two halves 
of an elliptical building, mumbling “Damn it, I should have brought my 
umbrella” and “gotto mail him before sir comes in”, her files in her 
left hand diagonally held, some distance from her physiognomy ,in an 
effort to deflect the rain as she ran. When she flew her way up two 
floors of stairs, too impatient for the elevator, she realized that her 
heroic, yet stylistically correct efforts were in vain anyway, and she 
was as wet as she could be. “Anywho”, she said to herself. 

No one else was there in the laboratory. The gaze of a 27-year-old woman
with sleep-craving soft eyes followed her mind in the direction of the 
two windows. Dewdrop rain had gathered on the glass, the shade 
protecting the window, the drops mainly came from leaves of a neem 
tree, shaken off by winds, much like as if it were a big dog shaking 
itself dry, she mused. She went and sat closer to the window in another 
chair and took a deep breath. Thin gusts of cool breeze along with 
misty rain entered through the crevices of the window panes, and 
somehow that smell attracted her olfactory senses and she closed her 
eyes. A beautiful lake, a rainbow, a grassy green field.  Outside it 
was raining hard in the semi-tropical city of New Delhi, the rain 
falling at various acute angles, as the winds fleeted direction like 
the choice of ice cream by a child. The colors truly visible today were 
grey, steel and dull yellow. Buildings stretched themselves across the 
street, till at the junction of two roads, where the rain formed a 
white halo around the traffic lights. The traffic was moving slowly, 
cars, autos, taxis, busses, their red back-lights on, red looking 
bright and fuzzy through sheets of rain, contrasting as blood on a 
white sheet. As her eyes drowsed, she thought on, a mellow glow 
reminiscent of the cloud covered sun filled all around. Suddenly she 
began feeling sick, she felt trapped, as if in a closed space, or in a 
bad dream from which you can't awaken, and her breathing became labored 
and tears wet her face, much like the way the splattered rain drops 
caressed the glass... 

“Hie Sonia”. The moment the door opened, the dull library silence of the


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