Consummation of grief, heal thyself.

When the clock strikes twelve, I will be a voracious litterateur slash theatre-dabbler slash art aficionado slash moral philanderer slash academic achiever slash Post-War dreamer slash whatever.

'Rhetoric',he screams. My electronic identity is taking a hit with each post, and I have lost count of the metaphors I last used to describe my wilfulness. There's no reason that my ego should be receiving these hits with alacrity. I play with the Styrofoam coffee-cup, inspecting the brown dregs with disinterest.I observe sullenly that I'm not quite my usual testy self. Which would mean that the caffeine is calming me, soothing my nerves, kissing my palpitations goodbye. I am reading in the airport lounge today. A paperback edition of An Equal Music (Vikram Seth) rests snugly on my lap. I am shifty, because the announcer has very formally informed us of the flights delay by an hour. I hang around in the Bookshop and then walk the length of the Duty-free shop without really giving the items so much as a glance. Then,I walk into the Jet Executive Lounge and begin reading. I had read the book a year ago, so I am quite aware of the predicament Michael was in. I stow the book away in my backpack. I lean on the handrail and look around casually, my eyes roving the terminal for an out-of-place sight, an unnoticed sound. A little here,a little there.

A little way off from the place where the bored policemen are frisking the passengers, I see a girl maneuvering expertly through the long file of commuters. About my age, wheatish, black-haired, her hair tied back into a ponytail. She is dressed demurely in a salwar-kameez, but the way she carries herself tells me that she knew more about Coco Chanel and Manolo Blahnik than any number of the garishly dressed females here. Her handbag is slung rakishly on one shoulder. I spy a book in her hand. I squint my eyes narrowly to catch a glimpse of the title. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Good God. I look at her hands. They are slender and beautiful, and the fingernails are carefully manicured. Yet,there is a restless urgency about her, it shows through her sense of security and it makes her look vulnerable. And beautiful. These fleeting moments. Where the other person is so inaccessible, yet so tangible in every other way that sexuality is heightened, and perception, as we know it, glues itself to individual opinion.
Then, without warning, she catches my eye. Something stirs in the brown irises. There is a hasty tidying up of misplaced recognition,and she looks away,blushing a furious crimson. Then, she turns her head and looks at me again. Her lips purse and the hand clutching the handbag turns white. I walk away, humming to myself. Better to let these moments be.