These shameless tears...

Again they rolled down my cheeks as I stared at my sister, walking down the airport towards the Luftansa kiosk. I just turned a little to pat them dry and with a smile waved her good bye for a year at least.

The other day, I bumped into my brother at a signal on MG Road… He in a rickshaw and I on my bike… He waved to me from a distance and lip-synched something inconsequential… but his eyes were smiling, the smile of childhood… when he used to tease me with his funny rhymes and he would pull the belts of my frocks, irritating me… Now offcourse we are grown up and mature… nevertheless, a drop or two just rolled down inside my helmet and I could feel the cushion underneath my chin wet… The signal turned green and I zoomed off…

And then, when I went to college after two years, and met an old friend, as if by reflex, we just walked over to the same old, familiar corn wala at the gate and ordered for two half corn cabs with the spicy green chutney… As I took off my bike after the little nostalgic tit-bit, with blinded eyes and rolling tongue, I banged into a car only a few yards from the college gate. Whether his chutney had become spicier now or my tongue turned sweeter, I never figured…

They again promptly rose the moment my brother yelled at me for slackening up in business. I furiously told them… “Hold! Its business and you dare not interfere”. They heeded.

They decided to trick me another time. Changing their usual route, they rose from the throat, traveling all the way to the eyes through a hidden tunnel. All this trouble, only to catch me off-guard, when I see his name highlighted in my yahoo chatlist.

They are so unpredictable. Shamelessly show up when you want them the least… embarrassing you all the time… while watching an emotional movie scene or reading a book… and then people around smile at you as if you were caught stealing something. And yet they don’t show-up sometimes, when you are alone and wish you could cry your heart out in the pillows. When you wish they would come to your rescue in a heated discussion, just to end it. When grief sets in so much that your heart breaks, your throat sinks and your head is ready to burst any moment… they don’t show-up… and in absence of any action, just to fill the gap, you smile.