The Running Penguin

And she started running towards me the moment she saw me.  Not that she is a good runner or anything like that. Her running is more like a penguin running, just using the lower half of the legs to do all the work. The knees don’t bend and the upper body moves from side to side. 

She does run every time we meet. We may meet after a year, month or a week. Just looking at me stimulates the part of the brain which makes people run. While she runs in her ‘slow motion’, I keep looking at her and I don’t move an inch. This is the same person whom I keep talking to every day and night. Her long hair, her smile, her brown eyes and the dark circles around them which grow and shrink depending on her office work load.

You can be on the phone 24 hours a day, discuss everything you did and didn’t; make every major decision together about whether it’s going to be Taco Bell or Sub way or someplace else for lunch; make weekend plans for each other to make sure both don’t feel lonely and then go on a dinner date with the phone and the earphones.

But there is nothing that will give the same happiness as the physical presence of the person you love. And then even the silent company means everything.

While I am still going through these thoughts, the penguin collides with me and embraces me in a big hug, like I have just returned from a NASA lunar mission, safe and sound. 

And before I say anything, she asks –

“Main moti ho gayi na?”