A tiny orange ball of fluff
She should’ve known.
Because right from the beginning he’d sent her those photos. Photos of weeds swallowing an abandoned Maruti 800, the moon when it got full and turned a patch of inky sea into crumpled silver foil, his cat’s tail catching a rainbow by some trick of sunlight and glass, and a dead beetle that shone by his windowsill in metallic emerald green…
When she’d met him she wasn’t even sure she’d liked him very much. Their first date was at an innocuous coffee joint, he looked alright, but he’d spoken entirely in questions. Questions like- “do you like the Bombay monsoon?”, “have you taken the ferry to Madh?” She’d found both him and his questions lacking in something.
“Insipid,” she’d told a girlfriend later over the phone, “he might as well have asked me what my favourite colour was.” But we live in a time where very few people truly ask us questions about ourselves, and so she’d met him again. Three months in, she really liked him. And within a year, she began to believe she loved him.
She became certain of this feeling, when she started to save little pieces of information from her week, to share with him when she met him each Saturday. Things she would refrain from texting him, only so she could watch his face soak in every joke, every observation, every juicy piece of gossip she’d salvaged through the week. But the more she decided she loved him, the less sure she became of his affection for her.
And then one day, during a weekend break Gokarna, when she’d nearly dozed off by the shade of a rock on the beach, he’d shaken her awake. “Look at that orange bird,” he’d said, his voice plump with wonder. She’d turned away, but he’d insisted that she had to see this bird that was just a tiny ball of fluff, but so orange it was nearly gold. He’d pointed at a coconut tree where it shimmered on a branch and threatened to disappear, but she just couldn’t see it. He kept pointing wildly, his arms waving in the air…it must’ve have been slightly exhausting. Besides birds have this habit of leaving just when you point them out. But he was relentless, “left, left, right there on top, look!!!” He wanted her to see it so very badly.
So badly that she felt a little of her uncertainty dissipate.
Because wanting to share a moment of beauty, just to marvel at it in synchrony, is an underrated kind of affection. The kind of affection that could be easily missed.
After a while, she did see the bird. It was so orange it was nearly gold, just as he’d promised.
