The Talkers

He thought it was time to write about the talkers. After all only he could do justice to their story. He was always part of it. The story of the talkers grew in him over the years as he witnessed every moment of it.



How many years ago it got started he can't recollect nowadays ...

but it had been a blissful evening after a short spell of shower. Surely it had been an evening cool and indolent.



The man was at home when a message came to his cellphone.

He, the narrator, can't even recollect the content of the message proper though he was shown the content by the man ... but that message from her prompted the man to revert and to that reply he got another rejoinder ...

things started that way.



Next few days there was silence from both sides. She did not call or sms. He was busy with his works ... his station post manning alphabets.

He had been always alphabetically inclined. His books and poems surrounded him from his childhood. She must have someway been leading a similar life ... not fully similar but to a great extent alphabetical in her own ways.



That year when the rains ended and autumn had set in with a festive spirit in the air, they had graduated-from smsing to talking.

Talking over phone for long insipid hours had become a way of life for them. They talked. In their talks they explored the unknown deserts ... unseen valleys ... unheard music ... distant eclipse ... near and imminent issues -- political, social, economic, historic even prehistoric. They talked about life -- its necessary burdens and stresses and pulls; its insults and injuries; its superciliousness, morbidity, pathos and also ecstasies.

They talked about issues back home -- the fodder scam, the murders and rapes, the heavy dew damaging crops, the potholed roads, the movies in which there were excellent fight scenes of swords. They talked day in and day out.

Several times during the day and even sometimes at nights when the moon slept tranquil white like a baby in the arms of cloud, they talked exchanging thoughts and emotions. They talked about also fears and suspicions and doubts.

They always had issues to raise. Being good talkers both found enough resources at hand to extend and elongate their talks.

Sometimes they would unburden their souls. They would feel lighter after talks quite satisfied offloading bags of their personal worries and cares.

Talks made them tensed sometimes;

Sometimes talks rejuvenated them.

They found their talks essential to their being so much so that people around them suspected them to be in love.

If talks of heart bring closeness to people, they were close to each other.

They were definitely attached to each other by their inexhaustible treasure trove of talks.

They exchanged their minds sometimes in their talks.

Their talks took them to different and varied things, almost as varied as life itself.

In their talks they replicated life -- an online virtual world of their own.

They owed each other that.

They never grew tired of talks.

Interestingly the wide range of daily experiences only enriched and embellished their talks.

Being human beings susceptible to certain tendencies towards wrong judgements and fears, they also had violent talks sometimes -- full of aggression, hurt, disappointments, accusations, and again they talked over them to get over them.

They distanced themselves from each other because of wrong perceptions about usage of words and phraseology. They were so alphabetical!

They dissected words and syntax. They constructed sentences out of whims without care.

Still they talked.

Aggressions dissipitated to remorse sometimes. Sometimes they would just cry.

Sobbing replies came disjointed.

In cellular connected system they erected a world -- a virtual talk-based one.

Conversational.

They were always conversational.

People around them thought them to be in love -- a conversational and unconventional one this time.



They talked about so many things.

In their talks three separate novels they created.

And they talked about those novels then.

New characters surfaced.

They braced the storms and the gales.

In their talks they wrote poems, depicted a moonlit lucid evening, painted a Monalisa not even smiling.

They talked.

So much conversational they were!



Several years after when they were on deathbeds, they were placed side by side.

To everyone's dismay they still talked. There was no sound emanating. Only their lips moved perhaps. But unwittingly that worked fine for them!

After all those years they had no need to talk noisily. In silence they could even talk!

They could read each other's mind.

That way they died.

The talkers.