Rimjhim.

Her name aroused clinking, puddling and blooming feelings in anybody who heard it in the town. The town of rivulets and trees, the town where the people lived for people, and where the doors of houses stayed open, just like their hearts.

The town of Majdhaara.

Around an year ago from today, she was sitting on the damp mud, making mountains out of them, rubbing and scratching the mud with her curled little fingers and soft dirty nails, then cupping them on the contort.

What she loved most about this was not the mountains or the houses she built, but the feeling of her bare hands drowning in earth and getting lost in it, like kissing with painfull passion and coming out all red and bathed, with mud filled cuticles. She was engrossed. Too engrossed for her small age.

Smash! A mud ball came flying to thrash her under constructiion house.

“Hey!” She frowned with pouted lips, and her big round eyes glared at him. Scorned. Her frail cheeks turned pink.”What do you think you are doing!”

He chuckled, “Oops,did it hurt?”

He walked up to her.

“What is your name, I have never seen you here before.”, he asked with both his dirty hands on his hips.

“Why should i tell you, you broke my house.”, she said with her eyes still looking at the ruins.

“Hey come on”, he said sitting down on his knees and holding it together, “See, it can be made again…”

“Go away, I will do it myself”, she sheilded it pushing his hands away.

“Okay, Okay!”, he said resigning, surrendering with hands.

“So where do you live?”

She Stood up, turned around and started walking, leaving him behind and his baffled stare, as she left without turning around. Her off white frock swayed doubly in anger, and her bare feet thumped like slaps on ground. Her open-ended braids patted her shoulders in consolation.

His confused and intimidated stare followed her till she vanished in civilisation, and the river continued to clatter behind.

He looked down at the mud , the mud of conflict. The mud of mountain. Intact. Like it was never broke. Untouched. His confusion turned to shock, and he stood there scratching his head.
—

It was late at night and she often came out in her yard to draw, right after her chacha slept off. Her drawings were never on paper. Yes she loved the earth very much. She used all sorts of tools, her butty forefinger, ends of branches and twigs, and sometimes just her toes.

She drew circles and spirals and pretty unstructured shapes with her toe-tips, and it would look like she was dancing, alone, in the quiet.

“Oh, so you live here.” a half familiar voice interrupted her trance.

She saw only the bare feet, of almost the same size as hers, a wee bit more rough, stamped on her drawing territory.

Another solid frown.

“Oh I am so sorry, I swear..”, he pinched his small Adam’s apple apologetically but with a hint of smile.

She got up and turned her back around once again.

“Listen don’t leave this time, I am sorry. Let’s be friends?”

She folded her arms to her chest with a shrug, her back still at him, when he noticed a neon like light glowing, pulsating from his foot prints in front of him, on her artsy land. He looked with wide amused eyes, and the blue neon soon disappeared, fading out, replacing his foot prints with her drawing trails printed back exactly where they were.

“Did you see that?”, he said finding it hard to not shriek. He squeaked with disbelief much to cup his hands on his mouth.

“What?”, she asked, indifferent.

“The, the light! The drawing, Wowww!” He was still staring at it.

“I know”, she said, now turning to him.”I will be your friend, but dont tell anyone.” She looked at him rolling her eyes and swollen soft cheeks.

“Of course. Now tell me about it.”, he exclaimed.

Since that day, she always had company when she played, and in her private creations, quiet dances, crossing river bridges, climbing over branches and counting clouds.

“Manna!” she would shout out with dangling feet on her branch,”See” pointing at the cloud filled sky.
—
“I still think we should tell everyone, you are gifted.”, he said with the same excitement as the first day.

“You’re Magic.”, he said.

“No,never. Please dont do that ever, I will go away from you”, she warned.

“But, but why? You dont know what you are.”

“I do. That is why.”

“They will think I am not one of them.”, she said surely and disappointingly.

“Okay, never mind. Show me again, please” He said jumping and rubbing his impatient hands.

“Then break something.”, she said.

She twirled around and her frock creases lagged behind with her flying pig tails. And there it was.

The light. The healing. The sprinkle of magic.

Soon the crackles of the rear view mirror were bandaged back to life, as the cycle stood oblivious, without a remnant scratch. Sparkling new.

“You are beautiful, Rimjhim”, he said as he admired her reflection in the mirror, her soft closed eyelids, short lashes, with kohl peeping from them, and faint calm brows.

She smiled.

“Come, now lets play.”, she grasped his wrist.

Days turned to weeks, and months, the secret still a permanent resident in their hearts. And she, she just filled all the remaining space that was left in his heart, and around it.

On one of those days, she stood holding a dented steel plate in her hand, applying kohl with her pinky finger, a habit she acquired from her mother, when Manna ushered through her door.

“My Papa! Please help him!”
He told her in broken panting sentences,”His bones, I know you can help! It was the only land we had..”

She looked at him jolted, then frozen.

“They told me he jumped. My Papa!”

His words flew around her like broken autumn leaves, dry, violent, restless.

And she stood there like the centre of that cyclone, to which the leaves never touched.

“You’re coming,right?”, he said turning to leave, obvious about ‘with her’. Then he walked to her and grasped her wrist. Her now limp wrist.

“You go. I know our friendship ends here.”, she meekly said.

It was he who was the cyclone now.

He left. She collapsed.

She wept.

“Maybe you could have saved your mother if you were not so stubborn!, he left behind these words, the words that pierced her like a merciless dagger.

There was now a stab in his heart too. Not everything can be repaired.

“Manna!”, she screamed, to stop him, and to attempt to stop what had already been spoken.
—

She sneaked into the house at night, it was her first time here.

She saw him first, worn out and bandaged, grimacing in sleep with pain. The sheet still bore blood stains. Then she saw him, the more familiar one, lying fast asleep on floor.

His papa’s unexpected cough interrupted her cat walk. But she carried on with what she did best. The twirl. The wizardry.

Soon there was the familiar glow of light in that attic, radiating out the window. She stepped back, she stumbled.

“Whh..what..are you..”, Manna said opening one eye, and dozed off again.

He then snapped and got up. “You?” Eyes wide open.

Tonight, if not anything else, two hearts were healed.

Magic or no magic.

Light or no light.
—
“His bones still hurt, I think it does not work on people.”, he said looking down, secretly resentfull of something he shouldn’t have said.

“But he has been talking a lot, he said he will mow other’s fields.”

“And you, are you still my friend?”, she asked nervously.

“You heal hearts. You win them. You make them bloom, and you dont need the light for that.”, he held her hand,”You are magic, Rimjhim.”

Majdhara was green again, with the autumn leaves washed away. And with the peope who lived for people, people who embraced the magic that made hearts shine brighter, and the people who now had a treasure like no other. Rimjhim.