The Monalisa Lover

It was snowing outside. It had been for the last seven days.

There was a faint smile on his face as he walked through the snow to enter the New England Coffee Shop right opposite the St. James Park, Newcastle. The café was decorated with jerseys and posters of the Newcastle Football Club hero Alan Shearer, and Ka made a short registration of that. He was glad to have spent good money on his gloves, for the winter for slowly getting the better of him. He wasn’t one for coffee, and neither was the person he was eagerly waiting to meet.

The PA system inside the café was playing an old Elton John song that was written for New York City. He heard in the background the words that were written by Elton’s main man, Bernie Taupin – “And I thank the lord theres people out there like you, I thank the lord there’s people out there like you”…Ka had loved this song since his freshman year in college. He used to call his girl-friend MonaLisa at the time, and yes he was the mad hatter that Bernie and Elton wrote about in the song.

A few words about our man, Ka. His name is not Ka. His name is Shloka, and his friends in London found it impossibly difficult to pronounce that, and so his dorm name, so to speak, became Ka. His mother gave him the name after being profoundly impacted by the character in the book, The Last Son of Dusk, a book she read during her masters. Ka secured good grades in India, and like most good Indian students who came from affluent families, he flew West for his higher studies in Political Sciences. After spending 5 years in London, Ka moved to political journalism, and that was what brought him to Newcastle for the weekend.

The words of the song in the background trickled into Ka through his ears. The snow wasn’t going to let go, and Ka began to worry of being disappointed. But while the music was on, Ka felt like a romantic hero from an Elton John pop song of the seventies, who had set off to meet the woman who had been haunting his dreams for years. But Ka had not always been haunted by Nandini, even though in his mind was the vision of a woman very much like her. It was only upon chance that Ka found out that Nandini was in Newcastle, and that’s when he seriously began to think of her again. Today he sat clad in a warm brown leather jacket and expensive gloves, keen to stoke his feelings with music and romanticism.

Nandini entered the café in, what seemed from a distance, an expensive winter dress she might have picked up from Times Square. Elegantly, she came and pulled up a chair opposite Ka and made herself comfortable. There was half a smile on her lips, but that went unnoticed.

As soon as he looked at her, all thoughts of music and romanticism vanished into thin air. For Nandini looked even more beautiful now than she did during their university days. Her well chiselled out face, with fair skin, long eyes and deep colour on her lips seemed to nearly unsettle Ka. With studied composure, Ka smiled at Nandini, as though to welcome her, though the two of them always spoke in ways that did not necessarily involve much sound and noise.

“On my way here, I noticed a lot of fans gathering up for the soccer game. And cameras. You don’t follow soccer anymore?”, she said, hoping to break the awkward silence.

They quickly gathered composure and began talking of various things. Nandini was always good with men’s topics, like football, alcohol or politics. That probably what Ka liked most about his friend. Since the time he used to meet her in his jumper shorts in the wee hours of the morning, only to sort out the misunderstandings of the previous night, to this day, where both were clearly dressed for an occasion- Ka knew that they had not lost the connect. Despite that, it took some effort for them to maintain conversation, though both applied themselves to the task with admirable effort. At least they could both discuss the snow with ease. After that came Ka’s confession- that he had not been able to quit smoking. Nandini had some things to say on that, but she felt her words were best kept for another time, another moment. India. Relatives. Marriage. Salaries. Conflicts. Old friends. Their weddings. Facebook. Elton John. Bob Dylan. And so it went.

The snow kept coming down listlessly. The two repeated their first order to find themselves with fresh servings of Turkish Coffee. Ka asked for the ash-tray, but Nandini told the waiter that it wasn’t required. She looked at Ka and smiled. Ka smiled back. No words were required here.

Ka put on his dark glasses, despite the lack of sunshine. He wanted to admire Nandini today. As she spoke endlessly about the men who came and went from her life, Ka couldn’t but notice her innocent beauty. He felt as much in love with her as he was during university days. Only then, he had to face the bitterness of a defeat to his fellow batchmate who had proposed to Nandini then. Maybe it was his obsession with silence that snatched away his hopes of being Nandini’s forever. Maybe it was his crooked analysis about simple matters that took Nandini away from him, into the arms of another. Yes, he remained her friend, her best friend, but he had to live in the shadows of a great defeat for the most part of his life in England. Today, Nandini was no longer with anyone, and Ka had finished a packet of cigarettes trying to muster the courage to call her and make his intentions clear. He was running against time, he knew he had none. He was not afraid of making a fool of himself, so, in his delight to have Nandini as his audience, he quickly revised the words he had in his mind.

Suddenly the topic changed. Nandini remembered something about Ka that he himself had forgotten. His guitar.

“I’ve quit Nandini. I wrote a few songs in between, but couldn’t find time to put tunes to them. Ya, so I quit.”

Nandini looked at him like she knew this is what would come from him. The utter lack of discipline always kept Ka two levels below his deserved place in Nandini’s heart. As much as she wanted to deny it, she was beginning to sense the foundations in the theory of women being more mature than men, at the same age. Why couldn’t Ka ever realise that it was the little things about him that would make the difference? Little things, like having the courage to kiss her, having the strength to tell her about his feelings, having the drive to do something about his talents, his music, his poems? Having the sense to take care of his health, quit smoking? Sometimes Ka give the impression of not caring enough. And that’s what had always stopped Nandini from taking that extra step.

But somewhere she loved him still. Even if the chap was a fool, well, mostly.

ShloKa took off his dark glasses. Nandini noticed his eyes had swelled, even though partly. Outside the thick flakes of snow kept coming down.



‘While mona lisas and mad hatters
Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers
Turn around and say good morning to the night
For unless they see the sky But they cant and that is why
They know not if its dark outside or light.’