Mr. Squirrel, the fancy Passing cloud.

En route to Office, the cab halted in an alley off a road for a couple of minutes. Through the window pane, I could sense a glimpse of vista and after filtering out the noise in the image, there was this mysterious man smoothly treading towards the car.

He had depicted himself with a chiseled face, exotic skin and black cropped hair. He was casually attired and chic fashioned. After all this, I name him Mr. Squirrel. Why, Squirrel? anyway, we’ll see that later. When the background of the subject was focused, there was another man who backed the prior with hands full of duo bags.

Then I heeded that he is tripping while trying to take off his back pack, but why? Ah, he has a crutch in his right hand.

My brain says, "So what? carry on girl".

I am at the back seat, he looks right into my eyes through the window. His charismatic smile and towering physique was very appealing.

Mr. Squirrel puts himself in the front seat, the man hands over the bags to him, both greets each other and the latter leaves the scene. The cab moves and he is still trying to settle down with his heavy back pack, 2 bags and his lovely crutch.

He turns around, with a sparkle in his eyes, smiling at me and I froze for a moment. Thanks to the driver who proved that I was still alive, startled me with his driving skills, zum-zum and I was meandering at the back like a carom striker. My messy bun broke the tie and clouded loose behind me.

He asks,

“Can you please help me place these bags at the back?”.

My pupils dilated. With a grinning face, adjusting my tangled hair, I just nodded. I took those bags and secured them right next to me.

Every now and then we looked at each other with a smile and a pinch of blush and acted as if it was all casual. The rear-view mirror along the left door was our duck soup to communicate rather than all twist and turns.

I just wanted to hear his voice for once, the witty me, calls my friend asking about something I had known before, she praises me with dashes (all good words on earth), I react with a plain laugh and the phone drama is over. Now it’s his turn, as I expected, he took out his phone, dials his friend, asks some random question, gets a response and cuts the call with a mere laugh.

Ah, the child seized its ice cream! His voice was nothing like I have heard before. It was a mixture of silvery and manly, something like as smooth as butter at the same time as deep as sun at midnight.

Then what? Nothing much, I had already arrived my destination. It was bittersweet when I looked at him for one last time before I split from there. Now, in the first place why did I even name him Mr. Squirrel? In the Uber app, it said “You are pooling with Anil” and Anil means Squirrel in Tamil. Hope he didn’t book the cab from his Uncle’s phone.

This whole thing might be summed up to a feel of infatuation, but that experience is ineffable and it has lot to say even though it was transient.

~ Shamika