STORY READING "Midnight Fairy Tales – Part 2 "

I checked the tank, it had sufficient to take me home but not more. I said I’m sorry. I asked her where she was headed, she replied home and was scared being alone at this time of the night. 

The city didn’t have a good reputation for safety of women. I enquired that her home was around 35kms from the dhaba, the cellphone battery had been long empty .It was impossible for her to go home from there. I didn’t want to leave her on the mercy of a taxi. 

I offered my apartment as a bivouac for the night and asked her to leave early in the morning when the petrol pumps would open up. 

Initially she was reluctant, but later succumbed to my mot juste insistence after a heated debate with the stall owner about the possibility of reprobates with amatory
desires coming to the dhaba at night. I put on the helmet while she sat on my ride. Bakhtawar was at its best that night, it knew this would go a long way.

GRRUM GRRUM, Bakhtawar now carrying both of us sailed through. Bakhtawar’s resplendent black body, the shining steel rims sparkling in the moonlight and
the grumps, It was a ride to remember forever.

I reached home, parked my ride and went inside the frowsy room first to put everything on the table and the bed hastily into the cupboard. I called her and
in she came. She looked around for sometime and then took a chair besides the study table.

“So, what would you have”, I asked

“Nothing, thank you.”

“What about a coffee?”

“No, I don’t feel like having anything…”

“Okay, I’ll make some coffee for both of us, drink it whenever you want. :) ”

“Okay… :) ”

By the time I came back, she was reading a book. She was reading Gogol. I said”He’s one writer who had real wits. You don’t get to see that kind of humor
these days”. She smiled and said she’d never read him before. That made me flaunt all my literary pursuits,

“Have you read Pushkin?”

“No.”

“Umm…Khaled Hosseini?”

“Yeah…that one…about the doctor right?”

“Yes yes, did you like it?”

“It was good, it made me cry as well”

“Hmm…”

I wanted to keep the conversation going, wanted to talk to her.

Praise the Lord for those 3 cups of coffee each, we talked all night. From books, music, films to school, college, love and sex. She had the cute female
perspective on everything while I had the crude, boyish one. By morning we had established a bond between us, like we had known each other for years before
this. Time went on, and it was time for her to leave. After refueling her car, I asked “when are you planning your next trip here with an empty tank?”

“Haha, you want me to get stuck and scared again??” replied Nazneen.

“Well, I don’t mind if it turns out exactly like last night.”

“I’ll be seeing you”, she kissed me on the cheeks (my guerdon), and then left. I kept looking at her car till she disappeared after the next crossing.

“Holy….Cow”, I forgot to take her number and give her mine. I felt so disappointed and restless at such a big loss. The only option I have now is to wait
for Nazneen to arrive at my doorstep one day and so I’m waiting. It’s been two days now and she’s made a writer out of me already. Phew!