The flight that knew it all.

Acknowledging the fake smile of the air hostess, he entered the flight cabin in a hurry. This project had made him go through a lot. Meetings , presentations and  appointments which hardly gave him any time to even take a proper sleep from the past two months.

Finally, it was done.

And he was heading back home.

HOME.

 Not the place  where he was brought up, but the place where he had been living just for a few months before he had joined here for the project .

 With a little smirk to the passenger ahead of him in the queue struggling with his luggage, he was amused at the thought of calling the place where he didn’t like to live suddenly as Home. Maybe it was just because of  getting away from all this tedious work at last , his convoluted mind thought.

It was wrong.

He found himself relieved as he adjusted himself on the window seat. After all this time, there was at least something good happening  . But he knew that this was just the beginning. Amazing times were waiting for him.

As the air hostess guided through the safety instructions, he smiled at the thought of going Home.

Deep down somewhere , he knew that going home was just a façade. He had been counting days backwards , waiting to meet HER.

He had never thought  that this could happen. Yes, she was crazy and beautiful and so much fun to be with, but how could he miss her. He had thought that after  what had happened in his previous relationship  , he would never be able to be miss someone, trust someone, love someone again.

Though things had went pretty rough in his earlier relationship, he made his mind think his past feelings were still there. And so,  he made himself very difficult for anyone else to love. Being rude to people who took interest in him, keeping himself busy in work to such an extent that it would take a toll on his health were just the parts of it.

 

 And then as a fresh  breathe of  air, SHE came in his life.

At first, it was just the usual chats. She used to talk and he used to listen. Subconciously, he still was in this frame of mind to not let anyone close to him. He was pragmatic as he couldn’t afford another heartbreak.  So , maybe unwillingly , but  he tried everything to make her feel  bad,  portray a negative  image of himself in front of her and even behaved in a  very  rude manner  with her. All that he couldn’t vent out earlier at someone else was directed at her, the person who loved him the most.  

But somehow, she always knew this was not the real him talking. And so, she withered  through all of this, never for once leaving his side.

As things started growing and they started spending time together, he realized that he was witnessing a completely different world. A carefree , fun loving world which did not have any traces of his past. She had liked  him for a long time , but still never forced him for anything. They didn’t do anything romantic , going for some pre defined dates, or such. Taking him to places unknown and exploring the city, they did some seriously  stupid, unpredictable things. And even his stone cold heart found them beautiful. The small things that she did, though full of lame ideas,  made his world a better place to live in. And he started  looking forward to meeting her, spending time with her, faking a promise to his delusioned mind that he had not started loving her,. When they met, time would literally fly away in a flash.

She didn’t confess about her feelings to him but her diary knew everything. 

What she didn’t know was  that  he had taken hold of her diary once. And the page of that day’s entry of the diary was not smudged with something , but had been moist with his sly teardrop.

“I’ll be waiting here, For his silence to break, his soul to shake , And his love to wake ,” it read.

He still hadn’t given her his word on anything. Afraid of losing him, she also did not ask for it. But both of them very well knew the feelings in each other’s mind. It was going to be a rigorous test of her patience.

And when things were going normally, this project happened. And he had to go away.

Busy with his work, it was not possible for him to constantly keep in touch with her. Just a text here or there .

But even through all this , he started to miss the time that he had spent with her. Memories of not just her stupid ideas, but of her carefree smile and the way her beautiful hair twirled in tandem as those stunning dimples emerged on her lovely cheeks started making him happy.

Two months back while he was leaving for his project, he had given himself a deadline,  that he would sort out  all of his past  issues for her selfless love, before he would be back.

But here he was , in the window seat , gazing at the clouds in the sky as the plane raced through towards his destination.

As he looked at the clouds, he could sense a feel of soothing calmness oozing through them. He had always loved to have the window seat, just to take a look at them.

His mind was also like a cloudy sky, in essence clear and pure, but overcast by clouds of delusions. Just as the thickest clouds could disperse, so, too, even the heaviest delusions could be removed.

These clouds were guiding him home.

 He had always thought that taking this decision would take long. But now he realised, the decision had already been made. When they were roaming across those streets with her on the driving seat and him on the edge of his seat, silently praying to god all the while, to keep them safe,

KEEP HER SAFE.

When they just couldn’t stop talking and laughing and fighting for hours and hours and hours. The hands on the clock would be going whoooosh and time would fly in a flash. And after all these hours of spending time together, he still didn’t want her to leave.

She was indeed the rainbow in his dark cloudy life.

Now he understood why his mind kept on calling that house his home. It was not bricks or walls or chandeliers that made a house home. People did. And the memories that they made in that house that  made it home. 

For him, she had made it HOME

 In that instant, he finally  knew what he had to do.

Clouds would come floating into his  life again , no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to his life sky.

He would go back. To his Home. And to the one who made it his home.

As he closed his eyes, he thanked god for sending her in his life, and  remembering her carefree, elegant smile , thanked her, for being there. 

Through all his tantrums. Through thick and thin.

ALWAYS.

He wanted the flight to land, right away.

And to go and run and find her and just say two words 

Just two simple words,”

…..

Can We  ? "