In the beginning you converse with her even after she had left. You know you are only talking to yourself but your inner mouth doesn’t shut up. It dredges up all the forgotten oddities stuck in the cobwebs of memory; it goes on a walking tour of the haunted places. She says she wants to keep talking to you but other things keep her and it is quite late and both of you have to go to sleep.

You say yes yes and then begin to tell her of how you would like to sail down a river, either sacred like the Ganges or pristine and primitive like the Amazon. You say you had read somewhere that biologists discover about two new species every day in the rainforest. You also say they don’t know how many are dying. You talk about a poem you read somewhere written for this creature still not known to man and hence secure in that unknowing. And very slickly and quickly add that sometimes you feel she too is one such creature, imaginative and mysterious. You didn’t do it because you are trickster but because you want her to feel good, even if it is not entirely accurate. You already know some of the contours of her life and in that knowing mystery of the surfaces had already lifted like a fog.

Her voice softens, you don’t see her face, and this is a telephone. Sometimes you don’t even hear her voice; you just read her words and conjure for her a voice. She says you are wonderful and yes how she wishes she could float down the river with you. You know she hasn’t taken this trip before and it is possible that she may not take it after this. You say that once crossing one of the distributaries of Ganges, two river dolphins rose beside your boat, like two silver coins. You say every time you crossed a river, on the spine of a bridge, you dropped a coin for luck. You say once she was there too beside you, at the door of that railway compartment, as the train clanged its way across the river. And she dropped a coin before you did, for the year you will not be able to see each other and for your next meeting. You kissed her lips hungrily, breathing the smell of her chap stick. She was afraid someone might surprise you both and pushed your face away but didn’t let go of your hand. Across the river was the city where she would disembark, you know more than a city, it’s a country that will swallow her. And you had to go further than her station before you return.

She suddenly says, “Stop! Who are you talking about? This is not me.” You say yes it is you and all this is a dream I saw. If she had pressed you with the date of this dream you would have told her the truth. Yes it was not her exactly, but then it could be her and it indeed feels like a dream. She says sometimes she doesn’t understand you and that you seem to be talking to yourself. She is intelligent and sensitive, so she notices these things. She grows doubtful again, unsure. You can feel your voice sounding foreign even to your own ear, the tones where your speech differs from normal style, quiver a little more awkwardly.

You stammer a bit, speak circularly, use in fact twice, at the beginning and the end of every sentence. You say oh you didn’t realize it has been more than an hour since she said she has to go to bed. She yawns, yes she didn’t realize you have been talking for more than two hours and all she wanted to do was to check on you and see how you were doing. You say, thank you for your call. I enjoy talking you to you very much. You don’t want to sound too lonely, which you are or give her the impression that you don’t get to talk this way much anymore. So you sound casual and say, sleep well, hope you get enough rest, take care of yourself. She says you too. You say thank you again. A few years ago if you said thank you for a conversation, your friends would have laughed at you. Now you indeed feel thankful that you got to speak out aloud. Even though you write in a journal, it doesn’t talk back to you or say I would like to float down a river with you. She says “Bye” and you say “Bye”. This time you put down the phone first before she can. So that you don’t say thank you again and sound like a fool.

In the end you keep conversing with her even after she had left.