A blast from a fishing boat’s horn
woke him up. Sunlight was streaming in through the window. He looked to his
left; there she was; sleeping peacefully looking as beautiful as ever.
Sometimes he still couldn’t believe that he ended up with such an incredible
girl. It has been 5 years since their relationship started, it had taken a lot
of courage from the both of them to bring it this far. They had come a long way
from the highly emotionally scarred couple they were in the starting, together
they had successfully climbed the mountain of insecurities that they both had.
Life had been good to them. Both were
working in Bangalore in good jobs and they lived together in a beautiful
apartment overlooking a park. A year back they had bought the place they were
in now, a one room house on a cliff overlooking the sea in a secluded beach 5
hours drive from Bangalore. The other end of the beach had a small fishing
community staying there who were really friendly and welcoming and the place
came quite cheap. I was just a small room with a bed, table, couple of chairs,
a kitchen counter and sink and a bathroom but the view was amazing. About a 10 minutes’
walk down the cliff was the Arabian Sea in all its glory. They came down here
often on weekends and other holidays; currently they were here for a 3 day
weekend. Today was the last day of the weekend, they would return back to
Bangalore the next morning.
He was awakened from his lazy half
sleep by a wet slobbering at his feet. It was Dexter, their Labrador pet dog. When
people asked why the dog was named Dexter they would say because Dexter’s lab.
It was just one the many jokes they laughed together loudly when they said it
irrespective of it being the thousandth time. Sensing that he had woken up,
Dexter wanted to go down to the beach and play. He loved playing football on
the beach and chasing the waves. He was dead afraid of crabs but, one sight of
them and he would run away with his tail behind his legs. He dropped a ping on
her phone telling he was going down to the beach, picked up the football and
ran down to the beach with Dexter in hot pursuit.
They played on the beach for almost an hour.
They also met Laxmi, a fisherman’s wife who provided them with good home cooked
food. She informed them that everything was ready for the night. He was
planning a big surprise for his beautiful lady that
night, after years of writing he had finally completed his first novel. It was
a crime thriller set in Bangalore featuring two cops from the Bangalore crime
branch, Raju and Radha. A romantic relationship between Raju and Radha is a
subplot of the novel. She always criticized him for writing a ready for
Bollywood novel rather than something with good substance. But he knew that to
get a book published from a respective publishing house he needed to have some
mass appeal and indeed it had worked out; Rupa had agreed to publish the book
and a sample first draft of the book was with him now. He was going to present
it to her during dinner. She had already read the entire book except the ending
and the last chapter. He had been working on the last chapter for almost 4
months and finally about 3 weeks back he got a really good idea and he
completed the novel.
He came back to the house; she had
woken up and was already taking a bath. They had plans to visit an old rundown
fort some 50 kilometers away. They both got ready and armed with directions
from the fishermen set off for the fort. They stopped to have breakfast from
their regular hotel on the way, a small little shop which served hot tasty idli,
dosa, vada, sambhar and chutneys. They also got some idlis packed for
lunch.
They reached the fort an hour and half
later with him inevitably getting lost twice on the way. The fort was
beautiful; it was made of red sand stone and the green moss covered a lot of
it. It was overlooking the sea and you could see the fishing boats coming back
with the day’s catch from the fort. They found a nice spot in the shade and
settled down there. They sat there enjoying the nature, the peace, the quiet; talking
for hours. His misgivings that she might not find him funny one day proved
wrong, she still laughed at the silliest of his jokes and still called a lot of
them lame. Her passion for technology still fascinated him. They could talk for
hours about it. The sun setting was a beautiful sight from the fort. They went
down to the beach and took a long walk along it as the day cooled off.
The journey back to the house was much
shorter as he didn’t lose the way again. They stopped at their hotel for hot
chai and snacks. After reaching back at the house they packed their luggage and
cleaned the house as they had to leave early morning the next day. He told her
that he had told Laxmi to make dinner. They will go to Laxmi’s home and eat and
will sleep early so that they can wake up early and set off for Bangalore. They
started walking along beach at around 7.30 to go to Laxmi’s house. Dexter was
running up and down excitedly along with them.
Just before reaching Laxmi’s house was
an abandoned boat which was kept on the shore inside which he had asked Laxmi
to set up the dinner and she had outdone herself. The boat was lighted by a series of oil
lanterns kept on it. Two small chairs were waiting for them in the middle of the
boat. Dinner was set already in the middle of the boat.
“I have a surprise for you tonight
babe.” He told her
She looked so happy and surprised to
see the dinner setting. She said it is really romantic and they sat down to
eat. Dinner was delicious; rice, prawns curry, fish fry and semiya kheer. After
dinner he presented her with the first copy of his book.
“I finally finished it.” He said
The excitement on her face on the
seeing the book had no bounds to it.
“I like the cover page design and it
is much thicker than I thought it would be.” She said checking out the book
“Oh, that is because they bound it
along with some blank pages because I was rushing them for a copy before we
came on this trip. There are like 50 blank pages in the end. Go on, read the
last chapter.” He replied
She started reading the last chapter
out aloud; you could see her expression changing as she read it. She came to
the final line of the book; Raju and Radha are sitting in their favorite
restaurant after solving the case, Raju presents Radha with a ring and asks
“Will you marry me?”
She turned the page, there, embedded in
the pages was a ring; she looked confused for a moment and then looked at him.
He asked “Well, will you?”’
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