Yet again I found myself talking to her for length, from the pettiest thing to the "what life wants" depth. Four buses honked passed on the nearby road, her jealous dog cooed nudged and showed his displeasure, the song on my vlc player repeated for the fifth or sixth time, her mom dropped in once and left(she described of her mom's reactive look, "crazy girl with crazy little device" ). It went on..covering her fascination of the New Zealandian landscape and Egyptian desert( here we both admitted that our geography knowledge is pathetic as none of us could figure out in which continent, Europe or Asia-Pacific or something else, New Zealand falls), an imaginary question, "if you marry a rich girl, will you tag me along to your dreamt Europe tour?" ( I said it is a highly stupid question and the answer is, of course, NO), an anecdote at a cottage in a remote hill station where she had spent a night while the wild water of a river kept gushing at a stone-throw distance for all the time. We ended when her mom called her again asking to assist her in the kitchen chore.

She lives in a hilly place with a breezy air and frequent showers and many water falls, with her mom, dad and a teenage brother and a pampered dog, named Tom-Tom. Her flat is on the fifth floor of a government quarter building of the fire service department where her father works. The building has no lift. "The fire service department doesn't believe in the lift concept"- she reasoned frivolously. She is grateful of the stair though, because it has kept her waistline at 26" and still allows her to get up a bit late in the morning. "No morning walk, you see."- she laughed.

She returned home from the university four months back after completing her master in print media. Then she applied for a job sending her resume to all big and small news paper groups. But it is a bad time for the campus leavers with a job market waiting frozen outside. The one or two offers that arrived on her way, came with a dirt cheap salary. So she decided to hang on and take care of the flowers that her dad had planted on the vases and carpeted soils and watch them bloom. She played with Tom-Tom to the extent that he became hostile to her dad and completely became possessive of her. "Probably I won't be able to marry when Tom-Tom is still alive!"- she wondered one day before hanging off my call as she needed to give Tom-Tom a bath.

One day when she took out her dog for a walk, a sudden rain caught them. Rain in a hill always arrives that way, without a sign of warning. Next day Tom-Tom had a fever. So she went to the veterinary hospital and waited for the doctor. "Tom-Tom puffed all the time"- she said later on. The next day, when her dad tried to give medication to Tom-Tom, he bit the daddy's hand. She told in despair, "Tom-Tom didn't leave dad's hand until I gave a big slap!". She consulted the doctor again who advised to send away the dog which she couldn't do of course. Instead she locked Tom-Tom and shifted him to a lonely corner. After that incident and when she had enough of novel reading, she decided to join a college as a teacher. "It is only for the time being until something comes on your way for a media job." - I often consoled.

After more than one month, she exclaimed, "Hey, I am loving this job"! Though she has to study lot her self and that there are a few hopeless students who never bring their text books, it is something she is enjoying. She is even contemplating to do another master in English literature!

Tom-Tom has recovered and behaves well now. Yesterday she talked of the age of her dog.

They say these are petty things to know about, to talk about. May be. But One only needs to know that when he talks, someone is out there to listen, that he won't get a yawn in return ( the reason why we grow distant).

Happiness is made of small things. To listen is to heal.

Somehow I couldn't resist posting this beautiful song.

( Moloya, thank you for the song. Oh, I know you read my patchy blog. I force you to read. Don't I :D

Beach, sorry for the Hindi. )