ROSE

“Wow California …isn’t the weather there just like India?...and you get almost everything(Indian) there these days…so not much you will miss huh!?”

“I heard everybody in the States has a car…nobody every walks.”

“Oooo away from the big Indian family…nice…I’d live better if I too met w/ the family once a year!”

Her move to the States was generally greeted with such and similar responses that exuded awe, excitement, and happiness…sometimes even a tinge of jealousy would show up. It was as if her move was regarded as an escape to a paradise, where things were picture perfect. And life in such a place had to be good – no? As if just the place guaranteed that life, relationships and everything around and beyond that would be shipshape. But ask people who lived in this paradise, they thought of it as otherwise and claimed that the greenery was all there (in their motherlands). They hastily replied with a reason or two and made it sound as if they were in the so-called Paradise by chance and not choice.

She answered both parties patiently, because, she thought she knew how to savor the roses and how to make sure the thorns don’t get to you…

PERCEPTIONS

They sat across each other in the most happening lounge in town – La Bouche. He had made a good first impression (didn’t he always?) and she was glad she had agreed to meet him. He was wearing a black corduroy shirt with faded blue jeans and had a shock of silky black hair that was neither too long nor too short. A dimple formed across his right cheek every time his mouth broke into that infectious smile and one could see the perfect set of pearly whites. The cologne scent that he exuded, the prominent Adam’s apple and the slight stubble….she was beginning to fall for him already and only hoped that his thoughts and character matched up w/ his looks…As they sipped their margaritas she noticed the thread (the sacred thread worn across the shoulder after the thread ceremony) as it peeked into view from under his shirt. “Still holds on to his roots after 7 years in Australia”, she made a mental note. Although she tried hard to focus on their talk and him as a person, she caught herself drifting….

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me

The song played in the background…She looked at him and thought that his eyes mirrored her feelings…Little did she know that his thoughts were w/ Julia and the summer evening that they had spent together at the Copacabana beach in Rio…