The stories return, by the river Vitasta.

The airport was largely crowded that day. It was the season of weddings. Relatives, Delhi bound brides and grooms- shopping wedding trousseau were pouring out from the arrival gates: half bemused, half dreamy. The distant Pir Panchal mountains smoked, as they did from early morning. Early autumn showers had lashed the city. Thin white lines of smoke that became the color of mist blended with the pouring skies. Swam pools of water littered all around. Traffic was heavy too in this area. But the land showed its recent sylvan history. Here and there, among the clumsy army bunkers and modern buildings- hastily plastered, the tall wire fences, were still fields, vast grasslands that seemed ochre, and above which settlements laid. There tin roof tops silhouetted under the sun. Today, of course, they had simmered under the misty autumn smoke. It was as if the skies had lowered down and engulfed them.

Patchy asphalt on the roads was as common here as was the cheap copy of North Face raincoats, readily smuggled through Ladakh. Tiny rain droplets would harass the pools of water created, that stretched right in front of him. The swam pools were not the only ones suffering. His heart felt similarly too. The wait was long. Or so it seemed. His passive persistence under magically beautiful weather was beginning to wear off. He had already made a thousand plans for the day. Though the plans seemed to change every passing second. He was imagining their conversation, he was imaging her dress- a black and white shalwar kameez with a free flowing chunni, he was imagining that moment when their eyes would meet. In this claustrophobia of jostling men at the arrival gate, he was serenely alone. Nothing mattered. Nothing rattled him.

It was on one such day when she came to meet him.

                                               
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They were on the deck of the boat which was sufficiently lit by the bulbs, that hanged from the baroque wood craving- which is traditional and exquisitely royalist roofing used in this part. The sun was slanting on their faces- the hills-  whose shadows cast on the dreamy lake, gleamed. The light on the hills had altered, from midday dullness to the evening warm glow of sunset. Bashir the care taker served them cups of kehwa. The skies started gathering the evening clouds, when they took the stairs and sat on the roof top of the boat- where she spread her chunni and asked him to drown his head in her lap, watching the sun go down into the lake. It was the most beautiful evening. All the celestial lights were witness in this odor of flowers, while an elegy of separation was drawn deep in his heart. He kept quite. He was scared. Scared that she may hear this elegy. Nothing separated them. She kept quiet too. Some evenings are meant to grieve, some to reflect, and some for savoring the togetherness. For them it  was an evening from which they wanted to gather a lifetime of memories.

The pale stars were sliding into their places. The leaves barely hushed in the westerly winds. Everything was still and sweet. Drifty clouds starting giving way to the lone bright star, when suddenly a fire cracker went up into the skies, making her face brightly visible to him. Her hair flickered. Like a cinematic script written with thought, the world was celebrating this union of lovers. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything can be believed in.

It was one such evening when she came to meet him.