Full moon night tonight. sweet smell of trees in bloom at the end of the season of spring.Ram sits on the deck, watching the breeze ruffle the pines, the customary beer in hand.It reminds him of Rashmi, the girl who loved him or maybe who though she did. That was many days ago, sometimes on meditative nights like this, where the peace is like sheet ice on a white winter lake, solid those memories come back. Gulzar's gruff voice wafts out of the dining room, and Vangogh's irises glow irridiscient in the moonlight.On nights like this,after having cooked a small meal and having run through the fund figures for one last time for the night, he tries to scan those far reaches of his memory for words, those old conversations in that language of home, that mongrel mix of two languages, Hindi and English.

    Words are just words, and they are hard to recall with time, but memories are a different thing, they remain and when recalled come forth sometimes as torrents sometimes as trickles. But still he tries, as he needs the words for these conversations with himself. Rashmi used to fight him rather his customary beer after work, she belonged to the

old school and though it used to bother him a lot then all it now brings back is a smile.There was pain too involved the day she came to him, free flowing tears and said that she loved him.

He was speachless for that second, and oh yes he remebers how he was cracking peanuts and eating them as she walked down the road to him, and yes he remebers the look on old Badri's face,that was the name of the old man who used to sell peanuts and channa, opposite to the school,ofcourse he remembers Badri's toothless smile and his two wifes.It was inscurtable for him to see that those badgering talks or teasing with Rashmi meant anything more than words he needed to speak, to exhale to mark his cycle of exsistance. He remebers that feeling of dread, that bewilderment at her tears and more at her words. And when those memories only the memories, for he had long forgotten the exact words,not that the verbatim of those words spoke on someday in September 8 years ago would help, he wonders where Rashmi would be at this point of time, if probablility goes she would be married, probably she would have some children and more accurately would be more happy than she would have been with him.And thus he soothes those memories dancing within him,maybe to quench that pheripheral guilt and to stop the thought of his solitariness that hangs around at the edge of vision.

    Marriage brings back the telephone conversations he used to have with his mother,

"Son you are getting older, please think about marriage, marry whom you choose, son we are getting old and so are you". For a while he evaded that with goals,buisness school, money or bust and other priorities.Though now he had run out of any more reasons to give and though now he is beyond that set golden treshold of youth,had hit thirty couple of months ago, with a receding hairline, flung faraway from home though sometime he wonders if born nomads can ever hope to claim anyplace as home, maybe not.These questions haunt him on somedays, as he sees the circling night that comes and goes and as he pauses to exhale in the space in between those shades of light and dark.