- Story 1 in normal font
- Story 2 in italics
It was the third year since I had first visited this place. The leaves brushed against my face as I walked through this dense growth of grapes.
The engines have stopped and the rotors are slowly ending their long revolutionary journeys. I can see the rays of the sun glistening the metallic hue of my plane. I look out of my glassed canopy and I can see clouds rustling in distance. The sun bathing me in all its fervor, all it’s radiance and all it’s magnificence. What do I see ahead of me? The altimeter in a downward spiral, calculating my downward trend and proclaiming a certain doom. 13000 feet….11000 feet…..
I looked around and suddenly found myself in an unknown corner of the vineyard. I heard the crushing of the leaves beneath my legs and I could see some mottled leaves lying dispassionately. I looked around, trying to discern what part of the world had I entered. I brushed the dust off my boots and picked up a mottled leaf. The leaves were botched with red spots and they easily crushed under the slightest grip of my fist. What did I see ahead of me? A leather bound book. The book was rusty and it’s spine was cracked. It smelled moist and seemed like someone had thrown it here a long time ago. The sun had already set down behind the mountains and the sky was painted as melancholically as rivers meandering through plains. Softly, righteously and confusingly. What was I looking for? Certainly, it wasn’t something outside.
Trouble. I am in trouble. I had stuck one photo against the windshield of my plane. The edges of the photo had become groggy and a simple blow to the windshield would unstick it. Beauty in its rarest form and reddest form. I wish I could have just drank a glass of red wine with her before leaving. I touched the photo with my hand and tried to wake her up from this old photo. Looking down, with her hair covering her face and standing with her left leg a little ahead of her right leg. She isn’t the fairest of all the ladies I have met, but she is the fairest of all the women I understand. The gold watch on her hand shined due to the flash of my phone. She had worn a red coloured dress that night and it had a very tempting cut. Cut through that redness was a coquettish scissor undermining her leg’s grace. Her skin was a disappearing act, binding my attention to it, sabotaging my control and playing a certain telepathy was the spline in her dress. 9000 feet….
And then I saw a girl looking down upon me while I was running my fingers through the edges of the book. She was just standing there, with no expression or emotion on her face. She had a look of a tired worker and she kept her left hand on her hip, looking at my face and the book I was holding. Ragged hair, muddy hands and wrinkled clothes, she was the whole vineyard condensed. I stood up and asked her about this place. She didn’t answer. I asked her what her name was. She didn’t answer. Maybe she could not speak or she just didn’t find me convincing. I looked around and the grapes were minding their own business. She pulled off some grapes and started walking ahead. I called out to her but she didn’t turn back so I followed her. It had started to rain and I could see the drops hitting her, weighing her down. Those rain drops were smiting the soil and I was afraid it might just crumble the ground beneath her. Her footsteps were heavy and she stamped the mud like a queen walks in her court. Tip toeing between two raindrops, I followed her grace. We were a drenching couple, running under the angry heat of life, drying ourselves of hostility and trying to nurture something within. I saw a raindrop roll off her hands, down to her fingers, clinging there for one last touch and shining her like a diadem. She turned back suddenly and glanced at me. She smiled at me for the first time. Oh what was she? I looked up to the clouds and said, ‘These gusts of wind enchant me, these drops of water drench me and this girl tousle my heart.”
6000 feet….. What do I tell her before I crash down? Flying dangerously down these deathly boulders, I don’t think I can maneuver this craft without damaging it before. I look out and all I see is rock. I could see a solitary tree on one of the cliffs. I wish I could back go back with her to a place I haven’t shared with my colleagues. I remember riding up in the wind to a cliff with her and dancing with her. Her hair had been disheveled due to the wind but she was a flame in that moment. I had sat there with her under a tree’s cool shade and I listened to her voice. The voice which could cut through my inner mountains, eyes which irrigate through my farmlands and lips which could invoke my greatest desires. Why had she convinced me to come up here? I was strong as sunlight, stubborn as knowledge and yet she managed to make me climb this torturous path. At the bottom, she was as human as me. Flawed, controlled by times and complacent by conviction. But at the top, she was all wilderness. Just as a flick of a switch, she could change from man made to man coveted. She confronted me with a beauty so rare, so difficult to envisage and yet she was so tangible. I considered myself durable, resolute like these cliffs of time hardened rocks but with her mercurial nature and her magical schemes, she has induced modesty in me.
She led me to the winery inside to save myself from getting a cold in the rain. I saw that she immediately put on her worker’s apron and started destemming the grapes to remove the tannins. Her fingers were so graceful and it looked like she was born to handle these berries of intoxication. After destemming, she went over to the conveyor belts to see if the grapes were sorted properly. Among all these complex machinery was a small human being monitoring the efficiency of the system. I could comprehend the powers of the smallest atoms and largest universes, I had the power to analyse the data and yet I could not perceive her stillness in front of me. Calloused hands or calloused hearts, she was gliding with a slow grace against that backdrop of an immense universe. I did not disturb her while she was working. I did not want to violate her rhythms and I just wanted to see her. See her in repetitions. Iterate her beauty over a thousand times. Maybe soon I had to leave that place, so I had to create a delusion to defeat mortality. I had to take every chance, every second to unhinge myself from the machines and enter her world. Her world, a world of good. I saw that conveyor move forward. She was the motion.
Will we ever meet again? The world is collapsing in front of me. My hands clutched tightly on controls of the plane. My veins were burning with pain. What did her touch feel like? I wish I could close my eyes and revisit those memories again. But I had to fight this last battle ferociously. So I looked at the altimeter and thought of what she felt like. 1000 feet…..I felt lonely when she didn’t call me or meet me. I missed her. I was fascinated by her and hungered for her touch, smell and voice. On a cold wintry night, I remember her gloves touching my face. In that tardy winter’s chill, she was the fire fueling my veins. She knew too much pain and she was tender. Sometimes when I had a heavy heart, she’d choose to whistle away making me feel insignificant. But she was the bird whose melodies don’t require branches, they only need time. Give her hours and she would sit by your side like a running brook. I remembered sleeping in her lap before leaving with a song of her praise on my mind. If I could have only touched her cheek… 500 feet….
I closed my eyes and she took my hand. Her hands felt as petals, unlike the calloused ones that I had imagined. She led me down to the storage area in the winery. I could smell the strong fermented wines and the dampness around. She came close to me and stood there. So close, all alone in this darkness among a world of inebriation. I opened my eyes and saw her holding a goblet. The goblet was lined with golden sections of vines. It looked magical and I saw her from close for the first time. What was she? A missing piece to a puzzle? An enigma? No. She was the inner story. Wedged, cornered and heckled into life too quickly, I was all pulleys and levers. I always relied on adrenaline surges to push me forward. And here I met this girl with the goblet. She poured some Merlot into her goblet from a bottle hidden behind the barrel. I came close to her and looked into her pensive eyes. I was always looking for a way out, a solution but here I had encountered a pirate. A pirate with an eye for finesse. The walls which I didn’t know could open, I could feel them opening with her lips sipping the wine. She led to me love and dream. To see her was to return home with gratitude.
100 feet… I closed my eyes and thought of her face. A song of praise on my lips. ‘This is the story of The Good….’
She held my hand and indicated me to open that book which I had kept in my hand. With some thought, I opened the damp cover of the book. The first page was lined with vines and I brushed my fingers on the title of that page, ‘The Good Looking Girl.’
Sometimes people yearn, sometimes people covet. Sometimes people want…. and it has only made me better. Because when the stories merge, it is light!
karanvankani 