Being busy with my workload, I rarely visited our building's rooftop. It has three floors. The ground floor was occupied by the landlord family, basically two senior citizens. The first floor was mine, and the third was taken on rent by some couple quite recently.
I have met the husband from the third floor but never actually got a chance to even meet the wife. I've had seen her glimpse a couple of times, but not enough to recognize her face.
Getting bored to death working from home on my laptop, I decided to go to the roof for a smoke break. I went to a corner surrounded by a wall, the cemented structure for the water tank, and the parapet.
It was a sunny day. I took shelter under the shadow being cast by the water tank. I was puffing my cigarette, enjoying the peaceful view. The peace saturating the environment was shattered by a sweet voice of jingling bangles. I could also hear a faded; voice coming from someone's anklets. My view was obstructed for the moment, but I'd the idea that it was the wife from the third floor. She's probably unaware of my presence. She started humming to some song. I tried to recall the lyrics from her melodious humming, but I couldn't. The thought of having a good look at her was irritable, especially after her sweet hummings reverberated my eardrums and some deeply buried strings as well.
I walked out of the corner. I saw wet clothes, Saree, Petticoat hanging on the ropes, but then I saw her feet, and they were so beautiful, flawless. She was wearing red nail polish on her toes. I'd noticed her lean figure through diaphanous Saree. For a moment, I forgot to breathe, but I'd just taken a deep puff… and haven't let the smoke out just yet. I coughed, trying to catch up with my breath. She turns around, humming stops, and putting the clothes aside, the goddess appears. Our eyes meet, no-one utters a word. I stayed still, mesmerized. Her eyes were interrogating me, asking me questions that I didn't know the answers to.