Impulse

In all of the 15 minutes that the old man stood in the rain, dripping water from his shiny white hair, chin and suede elbows, serenity never left his eyes, and amusement his lips. He could totally have passed as an ancient sculpture, just left there in the rains, washing away, melting, vanishing right there in front of your eyes in the haze of the torrential downpour. His stance was hypnotizing; there was nothing different or special at all about him. Everyone around him were enjoying the romantic whether – couples walking hand in hand, friends fooling around, kids dancing around in their gum boots and raincoats, parents sitting on a bench and watching their kids, yelling warnings when the children ran too far, loners sitting there and losing themselves to the rains. Everything was dreamlike; like the scene had just been cut out of a happy movie. If there was something or somebody to look at, you would choose to see the kids: carefree, innocent, thrilled or the couples: blissful and romantic. Who would want to look at a lonely old man and feel guilty about his solitude and have images of their children’s treachery in their heads? 

The middle-aged lady sitting at the bus-stop was compulsively arranging the pleats on her umbrella to tie it just like it had been when it was brand new. Even though she had been doing it just to pass time until her bus arrived, the sight was very disturbing. 5 minutes into her constant straightening of the fabric, the bus had arrived and in a hurry to get in, she stuffed the umbrella in her already overflowing bag. All the tidy pleats lost, it lay messy and forgotten in the lady’s bag while she now sat in the window seat, enjoying the monsoon outside.

A little kid stood at the edge of the footpath, his legs see-sawing against the concrete. His annoyed expression didn’t leave much too the imagination. Every few seconds his eyes would search his shoes for any sign of damage, having already lost his watch to the rains. He was extremely fidgety. He’d hold his raincoat together tightly around his body and just try to be comfortable when his cap would fall off his head; when he’d let go of his raincoat to adjust his cap, his t-shirt would get wet and he would yell audible profanities at the rains or maybe to the broken zipper of his raincoat. But right out of nowhere, his head smoothed out of what seemed like permanently etched creases, his irritation was replaced with a coy and hopeful smile and he was smartening the little of himself that he could. The next minute a pretty girl holding a girly umbrella had approached him and all the previous annoyance forgotten, he let go of the raincoat and followed her into the never-ending downpour.

It wasn't like her to be so impulsive or irresponsible but she seemed to have forgotten just what she has been missing out on in her busy, scheduled life and what she was slowly turning into.

She closed her umbrella, stepped out of the shelter of the bus stop and started walking, not caring for the first time in all these years about the consequences or about what lay ahead.