Lights, bells n horses

A vista of years down the lane and I recall one of those summer vacations on a green countryside.

My best cousin sought my assistance for the progress/ development of his love life.

He  promised me bars of chocolate if I could help him  speak to his lady love from the terrace.

He told me he had worked hard the entire term of his first year and managed to have a telephone placed on the terrace of the two floored house.

He showed me the telephone which he had placed under the water tank.

The mission assigned to me was to see that no member of the family would pick up any of the extension lines while he yapped away.

So while my cousin lay under the scorching summer sun, flat on the terrace yapping away to his lady love I spent my time around the telephones inside the house distracting uncles and aunts every time they tried to make a call.

But the fourth time I was at my mission, one of my uncles almost bashed me up.

My cousin sat next to me after the royal treatment I had for his crime and assuaged my aggrieved sense with a bar of chocolate.

Biting into lovely chocolate I forgot the pain of a bashed self and listened to his love story.

He said, “I love her. I will marry only her.And you, do you love anyone?.”

I replied with ease, “ Not yet. How do you know when it is love?”

He turned around with the feverish eyes of a great lover, “When you love someone the stars shine, the bells ring a horse will appear  and then you just know. I will have the white horse for my lady. What about your man?”

I tried to think of how my man would be. No mental image formed.  Somehow the sensation of melting chocolate felt better than dim images in the brain.

Yet I tried to contribute to his wild imagination with mine, “ Lights will shine, bells will ring, brown horse will walk down…then I know it is my man”

He eyed me with  a smile and said, “ Brown not white?”

I nodded vigorously, “ yes brown.”

And he continued, “ When she and I meet, she will hold my hand and I will adorn her tress with flowers. And I will kiss her when she sleeps away, a sleeping beauty. What about your man?”

I thought for a while before I decided to borrow a little of his version into mine “ When he and I meet he will give me a chocolate and he will kiss me while I sleep away, a sleeping beauty” .

We were cousins who lived and thought in fairy tales so it was no surprise when he asked, “ When will you know your man?When will that happen?”

I thought for  a while, “ On my birthday. That ‘s my day”

I felt him smile at my faith.

Across the years we hardly met but he married the one he spoke to lying flat on a terrace, under a scorching sun.

And me…eh… I failed to remember to fall in love…birthdays came in numbers and flew by…well then amidst other din in my head I do see lights twinkle away, in fact bells ring and then brown horses…almost like a fairy tale dream that existed in a little girl’s funny head…but then the pattern stopped with sounds , lights and horses. No man seemed to exist in my fairy tale world.