However, I am not in a mood to complain about the rain. At least this evening, as a couple of hours ago I had confessed my love for her, who, in return, had reciprocated, much to my amazement, to my feelings. Getting drenched, all of a sudden, does not look intimidating at all. Rather, it looks romantic; a perfect condition for taking me deeper into the ocean of love, whose depth, as I see it, awaits there to be explored and discovered. Splashing on the puddles of water, ignoring the sounds from the vegetable vendors, who look desperate to sell the remaining stuff and head home, I reach home, drenched, water still dripping from my slowly receding hairline.

As soon as I get home and change myself, I find her calling me on my cell phone.

“Reached home?”

“Yes. And it’s raining outside.”

“You got drenched?” she asks a little animatedly.

“Yes. Drenched in the rain, but soaked in love,” I say cheekily, to which she giggles and whispers, over the phone, “You are crazy.”

“Crazy, just like you,” I say, to which she bursts into another bout of laughter.

***

A few days later, she asks me about my dreams.

“Tell me about your dreams.”

“Well, I don’t have any big dreams as such. Perhaps, I would want to see myself write a book soon.”

“Great. That’s it?”

“Pretty much,” I say,” And yours?”

“Well, I also have this hidden desire to work on my writing more,” she says, I imagine, with a smile that lingers on her face for a while.

“That sounds cool. What else?”

“Ummm…I would want us to be together,” she says after a brief pause. Her words warm my heart instantly, and I leap in joy, my mind meandering into the realms of never-before-experienced-ecstasy.

“Let’s do one thing, then,” I say.

“What?” she sounds a bit

surprised.

“Let’s work on your dream. Your latter dream,” I say, and I see her smile—a smile that fails to keep covered the layers of satisfaction and anticipation hidden beneath the pursing of the lips and the accompanying sounds.  

“Huss,” she says, and we end the conversation for the day.

***

A few days later, she asks me about the geographical distance that is preventing us from meeting in person, from being together.

“Isn’t it frustrating?”

“What?”

“The distance?”

“It is. But I am glad that we

are making efforts to bridge

the distance.”

“Right. And I also feel that this distance is a passing interlude, just like the intermission between the two halves of a movie,” she says effusively. “The movie shall pick up its pace once the intermission is over.”

Now, I smile and she has her chance to see, underneath the smile, the burgeoning seeds of satisfaction and anticipation, just like I saw in hers.

“Don’t you think the interval has been interminably long?” I ask her; to which she responds with a long laughter before adding, “Yes. If only we could press the forward button and get straight into the movie!” She continues to charm me with her wit and candor, and I continue to fall for her.

***

Days have passed, weeks have disappeared, months have got digested, and amidst all these, we have become very close, our every conversation bringing us closer than before. We talk about dreams, individual and collective ones, little aspirations, previous failures in life, how we dealt with them, and the journey which lies ahead in front of us. Life, I find, is beautiful with her.

“What if we never meet, or never get to meet, after all this love?” she asks me one day.

“Tell me one thing.”

“What?”

“What if the sky should fall upon earth one day?

“I don’t know. Can that even happen?”

“Our situation is the same. We can’t worry about something we don’t have control over.”

“I know. Just a wild thought. Forget it, okay?” she tries to reassure me.

I just smile and she follows suit.

At times I wonder what defines dream and what, reality; or what differentiates one from the other. I have always believed that there exists a thin veil between dream and reality. A veil, only just occluding the two. And here, I feel the veil between us, between our existing reality and our plausible dream, is slowly, but surely, coming apart with each passing day before it finally comes off, allowing reality to coalesce with the dream. Dream would then become reality, and reality dream. One indistinguishable from the other.

“Hey, I saw a burka-clad woman today at the mall,” she says to me one day, her voice exuding excitement.

“And?”

“I saw her face as her veil slipped while she was picking up something.”

“What did you see on the other side of the burka, the veil?” I ask, curious.

“What I saw on the other side of the burka was beautiful, just beautiful.”

What she saw beyond the veil must indeed have been beautiful, I say to myself. After all, I have already seen, in my case, what lies beyond the veil, a veil masquerading as time. And every time I have managed to see beyond the veil, now separating us, I have invariably found it beautiful.