The man with the steel lunch box

Rain is splashing against the windows of the college bus i am sitting in. I am on the corner seat and friendless. Ear-splitting rock music is giving me the feeling of being detached from everything before my eyes. I can see the lips moving, the girls laughing, the driver occasionally turning back to inform the passengers of their destination , all in a mute fashion. That is when i see a middle-aged man with astonishing blue eyes coming in. My eyes that had been lazily scanning the scene uptill now are alert. His deep blue eyes warrant attention.

I take off the ear phones to blend in with the surroundings. The tap-tap of the rain is melody to my peace-deprived ears.

He sits to the left of my seat. In this part of the world where  i live, men and women avoid physical contact with each other as much as they can. You will never see any public demonstration of affection between the two sexes . The routine practice for any man, if the only vacant seat in a bus is beside a woman, would be to keep standing. Hence, It is natural that he maintains his distance.

Having found a new interest, i forget everything altogether and start studying him. There are many people in the bus but there is something about him that sets him apart. He is unique, distinguished almost and the fact that i am unable to give a precise name to his aura is annoying me. Maybe explaining his appearance will help.

He is a fair man with hair neatly pulled back and parted on the left side. His cotton shalwar kameez, though clean, looks like it has seen more years of display than it was made for. His peshawari-chappal ( common footwear for men in Pakistan) shines outstandingly . Mother once said that if you want to assess the true personality of a person, look at his shoes. She did not mean which brand of course. She is a simple woman with simple criteria of good and bad, and according to her if someone doesn't have a speck of dust on his shoes, he is a very well-mannered person and i should not be hesitant to befriend such nice people at school. I remember rubbing my shoes vigorously with shoe polish since that day, for a long time and the 'shoe-indicator of someone's personality' served as a useful tool to choose which people i should be polite with. According to this long-forgotten rule, this man still falls in the category of a gentleman. He is unaware of my askew glances and goes on looking about and around.  I look more closely and find him holding an orange polythene bag of an economical bakery in lahore, And in that bag is a steel-lunch box. Any moment now, i know, he would take this lunch box out and take a peek at its contents.

My study of human behaviour enables me to reach the right conclusions and my hunch is once again testified as he takes out the lunch box and does exactly that. His nails are neatly trimmed. (Another hygienic habit mother stresses upon) He smiles and what a genuine smile it is! So much more different from the girls smiling around me. So much more meaningful than just the lifting of corners of one's mouth.

Exactly at the same moment, As if feeling my intense gaze on him finally, as if replying to the attention he was being given, he turns his head towards me and his smile freezes. I find the answers to all my musings about him in that one moment i can never recapture. His eyes, dripped with an energy, a positive energy, a shine , a sparkle that was a bigger compliment to his face than the astounding blue color of his eyes. I have never seen such happy eyes and such a happy smile except those from the new born babies. In that one moment of absolute silence where all i could hear was the tapping of the rain against me and beating of two hearts, it dawned upon me that he was in love.

In love with a wife who had beautified his existance beyond his resources. A wife who cleaned his shoes each morning until the shining clean surface reflected her face. A wife who cooked for him and packed his lunch each morning despite being tired after a pleasurable night of mindless wanderings.

And there between us, in the single moment of eye-contact and ever since then, has existed a connection. A connection between the understanding and the understood. A connection no less frail than an autum leave with its dried up branch.

But a connection none the less.

For me he is someone looking at whom makes me believe in love.

For him, i am someone ...someone who understands.

I am sure he wants his true love to be immortal. I want to make him immortal with this writing he would never read.

I want to tell him that his aura has been given words and his capacity to love, recognised.