The rain drops that rode the occasional gust beat the sun-shade and sprayed into the balcony as we sat in an embrace, soaking in the beauty of the rainy evening. I wished the steady drizzle would remain a steady drizzle. We were wet, it was cold and the gusts made it feel colder and yet, it felt wonderful to be sitting in a small puddle. It is abnormal I know, but when one has his sweetheart in half an embrace, it is difficult to not be muddled. One can get carried away; I did and so, I gave her a peck. 

"You've come good distance since morning," she turned around and smiled - a polite reaction. It would've been totally appropriate even if she had snorted given how our day started. I shrugged, pulled her closer and shook my head when I knew our cheeks were close enough to graze. "I had my hands full," is all I could muster.

"With?" 

"Well. The old lady. I had to help her take the lift and then use her card-key or key-card or whatever you call it."

"Gentleman eh?"

"Yeah. Why not? Noble if you ask me. Who helps old people these days?" 

"You were a snob."

"Who me? No. I thought I was quite patient with her."

"Ha!" She snorted this time. "I am talking about your being a snob after helping that lady.  You didn't say hi or shake my hand," she slapped my wrist, wriggled away and sat leaning on my shoulder watching it drizzle.

"No. I was hungry and..."

"You were ogling at the idlis."

"Wrong again. It was the pongal, not the idlis. I've eaten enough of them for ten lifetimes." 

"But you didn't shake my hands."

"Well, your hand just materialised out of nowhere and when you are in a breakfast queue, hungry and tired as I was, you only see food everywhere. But I did apologise later, didn't I?"

"You gave an excuse. It was a sweet one though. What was it by the way?"

"You won't believe me if I tell you it wasn't an excuse. I said you were disarmingly beautiful and I didn't know how to react." 

"Part of it is a lie."

"No. You are disarmingly beautiful," I said, "you must take my word."

"And?"

"I am serious. You are beautiful, which is why I bolted away," I said and she laughed heartily. 

For a while, we sat catching raindrops in our tongues and sprinkling water from the little puddles on each other, not saying another word for a long time, until I lifted her hand off the patch to smell the fragrance of the moist earth on her palm. 

Sorry for not telling you before; Our balcony had a little green patch and a cane swing - one of those 'green-friendly' initiatives apparently. 

"What?" She broke the silence and pulled her hand away before letting me take it again.

"You are the queen of monosyllables." 

"You are here to yak along, so it helps. We don't step on each other's toes."  

"We are perfect," I declared emphatically.

"Yeah, right. What next?" 

"I don't know. We could sit on the swing for a bit, or take a walk or..."

"It's getting dark. How about going for dinner now so we can retire early?"  She suggested. That was perhaps the first and last sensible thing we spoke.

"Retire early?" I wasn't too sure if I wanted to do that. "We have one day, and you want to retire early?" I said without even bothering if it was appropriate to say something like that. 

"As in, we could come back and sit on this patch and watch the night make way for the day," she smiled reassuringly. 

"Then we need to buy some new clothes before we have dinner."

"You're right for once. I don't know why I didn't think of bringing an extra set of clothes. I wasn't prepared for the rain." 

"We weren't prepared for each other either. We come here for a two day sojourn, hoping to catch up on all the sleep we can, let our ears hear something pleasant or nothing and eat to our heart's content. And what do we do instead?" I said wryly.

"We meet, speak of Beethoven, the writings of Hemingway and Narayan, coffee, table-tennis and chocolates. We laugh about how people think we are crazy for being crazy about chocolates. And then we sit like idiots in the balcony, on the floor, when it is raining. We get wet, let our hands run along the patch, get our hands soiled and we catch raindrops." 

"And, we learn that our favourite colour is blue," I chimed in. "Yesterday same time, all I cared for was a two day break from monotony. I couldn't have conjured this even in my wildest dream. It seemed to be the perfectly miserable life this morning too, when I had to tag along with that grumpy old woman..."

"And tomorrow and for many days to come, we will wish none of this happened," she said and fell silent. "These tiles will dry once the sun comes out, but the patch will retain the moisture of this night, won't it?" She said pointing to the balcony floor. "What do we do?" An air of melancholy began surrounding the place. 

"What do we do?" I rubbed my palms together. "How about buying blue clothes to start with? We'll have dinner then and we could come back here, change into these wet clothes again and let time grow weary of us." And with that, we got up to leave. 

We ended up buying more than one set of clothes in the end, one for the dinner and another to enjoy the rest of the rainy night. After all, what's more fun than getting identical looking, new clothes to wear to dinner and then get wet in? 

"What if we want to sleep?" It was her idea that made us get another set of clothes. You can't go to bed soaked to the bone or wear the spare for two days. In the end we did curl up with the sliding door open to the elements, the fluffy comforter and ourselves to keep us warm as the rain beat down all night.

"Bagged?" She said and I nodded. Our stop-gap clothes were in a bag, the spare clothes were on us and we were on our way to the railway station to head home. 

"There's a large one," she pointed to a dustbin on the other side of the street where we dumped the clothes after a moment's pause and yet another sigh. "There they go. Proof of a rare good day," we laughed heartily.

"So," she said as we sipped coffee at the station while we waited for our trains, "what next?" 

"Hmm. I don't know. I guess back to getting our brains raked and ears roasted." 

"It was good."

"It was magical," I held her hand. 

"Funny isn't it? We are saying goodbye even before knowing each other's name."  A painful smile came over her face.

"I guess this is it," I said, getting up as my train arrived. 

"Your train isn't leaving for another ten minutes. You want to go already?" She tugged at my sleeve. "You could if you want to. I don't want you to rush and fall off the train."

"Or, we could take off to some nondescript village and live everyday like we did yesterday, chasing raindrops and butterflies, without having to worry about the world that waits to eat our heads. I can run back to the dumpster and get those clothes... Wait... We can't, can we?" 

She smiled weakly. "We could throw ourselves in front of a train a lot more easily than do what you just said. We aren't ones destined to chase butterflies, we are butterflies..." 

The train whistled, signaling it was time to leave. "... ones that have to go back to their cocoons even if they don't want to." 

"Right. Some cocoons aren't empty."