"I love you"
While returning from the doctor's chamber this evening, I didn't feel like coming home right away and decided to take a brisk walk and have tea. Soon it started to rain and I had to take shelter under the cornice of a house opposite Calcutta Deaf and Dumb School, round the bend of Vidyasagar Street (where Vidyasagar Street meets Upper Circular Road). There was a roadside tea stall nearby. I went over and ordered a bhaaNr of tea. The combination of tea and rain is always refreshing. As I took the first sip, my eyes fell upon a boy and a girl. Both of them were deaf and were using sign language to speak to each other. I stared at the movements of their hands with disinterest, wondering when the rain would stop. It was drizzling still. As I was about to get bored, something interesting happened.
The boy 'said' something which made the girl withdraw her hands and they fell to her sides and rested there. The boy's hand hung motionless on the air, frozen, as it were, after having said what it had to say. With the drama of hands suddenly suspended, I was forced to look at their eyes. A sudden glimmer had appeared in the girl's eyes and a certain quizzical smile at the corner of her lips. The boy's eyes were downcast. An interminable silence came upon them. The boy lifted his eyes and looked at the girl. She still had that glimmer in her eyes and made no gesture with her hands. The boy started to speak again. This time his hands looked submissive and the movement appeared slower. Another spell of silence followed between them. The glimmer in her eyes was now replaced by a kind of sleepiness, as if she was only half-looking at him and half-listening to what he was saying. She came near him and made a very slow gesture with her hands and finally I understood what it all meant.
The rain had stopped. As I started for home, I turned to look at them one final time. They were standing there, immovable and oblivious to everything around them. A loud procession passed by. One of the customers at the tea stall had to raise his voice above the noise to ask, how much? and the chaiwallah had to raise his voice above the noise to answer, five rupees. But in the silent world of these two young people, there was no noise. They just stood there, in the midst of all the clatter, looking at each other with quiet eyes, smiling peacefully.
While I was returning home, I had a thought:
If the boy and the girl get married in some future time, how will they quarrel?
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