Streetlights in Winter (standard:Psychological fiction, 2339 words)
Author: sayan	Added: Aug 01 2004	Views/Reads: 3615/2297	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Based on a true story. The rest is poetry and imagination.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

room, was shattered by the murmur of outside rain, as from the 
corridors. For an instant she felt it all going black. Then the door 
closed, the dull omniscient silence returned in the room. She quickly 
turned away and then looked at the girl who had just entered. “Hi, 
Kavita”, she said with a smile, “How are you?”. Kavita was her 
colleague, with whom she shared her laboratory. She got up to hug. The 
clock on the wall read eleven-thirty in the morning and a table 
calendar informed it was 2nd August 2003. She wore her gloves and 
started washing the testubes, petri dishes, beakers and all sorts of 
oddly shaped glass apparatus. Kavita meanwhile kept her handbag and 
looked around. On one of the walls, were hung various framed 
certificates and awards, reading things written in an italic 
semicircular font like “Award of Excellence”, “Best Research Fellow of 
the year”, and “awarded to Miss Sonia Ray”, “awarded to Mrs. 
Sonia”...Kavita once had decided on decorating her side of the room 
with a  ‘Pearl Jam' poster but eventually decided against it, mainly 
owing to a look their Sir gave her, when he had once entered to check 
the proceedings. Maybe it would have wiser to choose ‘Hiroshima man 
mour', she thought later. 

Dear Akash, love I feel so sick again...... There was no one in the room
and Kavita was teaching her post-lunch-pre-tea chat class that had many 
junior research fellow mates, soon to graduate. It was one-thirty. The 
screen had a rediffmail ‘write mail' box opened, and one by one letters 
appeared on the screen, like pustules on a measles affected child's 
face. On the top it said in blue, ‘You have 23 unread messages'. In the 
white space where letters were appearing out of nowhere, below it read: 
On 12th July 2003 Akash wrote........... The letters told their story. 
Honey I'm really sorry, I again feel so sick, and nauseated. May be 
because I didn't take my  ‘Lithosun' properly. She closed her eyes. An 
amber colored bottle in her bag, in red black and blue the writing said 
“Lithosun450” and below “Lithium Carbonate equivalent to Lithium 450mg” 
and “Dose: As directed by the physician” Sometimes I feel it's all 
meaningless. All I see around is everybody going about their business. 
No one really cares for me, except you. I feel so insecure. When I 
looked outside into the rainy city... 

After clicking send, the inbox screen showed a tail of unread messages,
with subject lines like ‘dear Sonia', ‘Warning', ‘Please take care' 
‘Please read, IMPORTANT ‘ and senders names did include more often than 
not of ‘Akash' and ‘Doctor Rina' and dates up to ‘2nd August'. But 
Sonia hated the word ‘warning' and feeling scared of being instructed 
by others rather pressingly by ‘Please Read'; her unilateral flow of 
emails like the one-way street overlooking the building was an 
unperturbed river of feelings, where waters flowed whenever flood gates 
had to be opened after rain. So over and over she clicked ‘reply' to a 
mail, which she found to be particularly sweet and loving. 

Sometimes I think what will happen after I die. The red lights in rain
remind me of a scene of blood. I'm not afraid; I'm not a vegetarian. 
Then I try to forget it all, think of a rainbow, a glassy lake and 
meadows. After all it's just a quarter-life crisis, isn't it? And I'm 
over the divorce, I have a fine career, we'll marry soon and it seems 
more than a novel. Only those moments I'm down, I feel then what, if 
we'll all die anyway, then what's a single life in a universe, where 
myriads of people just born and die away. Then I plan a grand finale 
for my life, may be off a cliff, a dazzling display, thrilling.... 
Honey, I'm so sorry, I promise the next time I write I'll write 
cheerfully and it'll all be better. Quickly closing her mail, she went 
over to Kavita's desk. Inside the drawer she found a copy of “Chicken 
soup for the teenage soul”, “Dr. Wean's Miracle foods to beat stress” 
and with a sigh a dusty copy of “Who Moved My cheese”. A memory, and 
she laughed. She turned on an online radio station; that was playing 
retro Hindi songs. This one was one of her favorites, built on the 
concept of the ‘naughty singer', the seductively sweet music of the 
organ, the lyrics translated into- 'You and I standing on two sides of 
a river That has no bridge on it, and nobody to guide us through. So my 
love I can't find you, And I search among the stars, and cold 
waterfalls in monsoon For someone just like you'... 

After working continuously for 3 hours, she sat for a while, averting
sight of the window. Sonia now typed something as a word document; 
printed it and collecting it and a few other papers went to meet sir, 
who sat in the adjacent small room. The interview was short, and the 
kind sir, praised her work, and more intently inquired of her 
well-being. Suddenly she felt angry. An impulse told her to shout ‘Why 
sir? Isn't my work good enough? Does bipolar disorder mean my life's 
over- God damn it man – its already ruined my marriage, isn't that good 
enough?' . Feeling happy being able to resist herself, she replied with 
a smile “Yes Sir, the chromatographic data indicate the same results”. 

As Kavita wasn't back after lunch, she locked the lab and went out.
Outside, away from a persistent smell of phenol and benzene, the fresh 
rain-drenched air was the sweetest smell she'd ever sniffed. Like 
perfume, it brought about a wave of memories, and she took a deep deep 
breath to fill her lungs. Few people seated here and there thought she 
must have been smoking pot. Happiness, she thought, sequestered in a 
ball is suddenly released, filling up all space and time. Quietly 
walking below the trees, leaves looking golden in the evening sunlight, 
which held on to the raindrops, just as a divine conspiracy she 
thought, to release them sporadically the moment she walked below them. 
She walked in the greenery of the campus for what was probably hours, 
thinking intensely and feeling inspired, sometimes smiling to herself. 
The rain had stopped, the traffic hastened and no haloes were visible 
around orange streetlights. When night had seeped in like ink into a 
glass of water, and which stars appeared first following twilight, 
remained eternal mysteries to her. She entered the lab around nine at 
night, after dinner at the cafeteria. Kavita had left for the night, 
and she had no jitters to write long emails. The rain started again. 

The following morning was very sunny, the sunlight hitting like needles
on one's face just out of bed. There was a crowd outside an elliptical 
extension of a building labeled ‘Laboratory'. Kavita arriving at ten 
that morning, pushing through the crowd took some time; there was an 
eerie silence and sun made every color look bright. Yellow, green and 
purple. “Didn't u hear before?”, a hush hush silence, some sobs. To cut 
the long story short, she understood within an ensuing ten minutes, 
from disparate sources that the sweeper had screamed five in the 
morning, finding a body in a pool of blood below the window of a 
laboratory, two floors high. Other people working in different labs all 
night had rushed out, though everyone swore they had heard no scream, 
no moans or any morbid noise. Must have been the rain. Presently the 
stains were being washed off the stony grey ground, but they were 
irritatingly indelible. Kavita's thoughts raced as to which of her 
self-help books would be of best advice in this situation. 

Dearest Akash, my love When u'll be reading this, it'll be too late.
That's something u don write everyday! I just wanted to say I love you, 
and let you know how happy I am. And they'll burn away my body and 
throw away the ashes, so that the atoms in my body can continue their 
eternal journey through time and space. I just want to know what will 
it feel like, what will I want to say, what if there's noone around. I 
feel so scared. Then I think I'll close my eyes slowly and thank God 
for every single moment of my life. But haloes will form around my 
eyes, as I look at the streetlights for the last time. And they'll form 
around yours, when u read this and look outside at the streetlights, 
tonight and maybe also this winter. Bye, take care. With love, Your 
Sonia. P.S. – I'm not angry with you. 

On 12th July 2003 Akash wrote... 


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