The rays of the setting sun gently caresses the river. Ever-moving shimmers blur the reflected light. The surrounding buildings casting huge shadows, making the inevitable night seem imminent. Still, a peaceful contrast exists between the two impressions, one being natural and the other artificial.
The third impression, however, lies further down the river. Seeming to be as one with the river itself, it slowly glides along its medium, its form making the barest shift in the pattern of the water.
The whole of the third impression consists of two parts, actually. One part merely a tool or device, while the second one is so much more....intricate. More mysterious. More unpredictable. A different form of being, and it is one with a mind of its own. As intricate as it is, its form is tiny, uncomparable to the massive giants of structures now around its vicinity. Yet it is also that very same tiny form that created those massive structures. Strange, queer.
And now, as the night makes its prominent appearance, the strange form stirs. Its physicality grows taller, and from its center a long, thin pole-like object reaches out towards the water and enters...
* * *
Draw, stab, push. Draw, stab, push. The same old routine seems almost natural to Him now. He does not even have to think about it. Hence the big wooden pole makes its consistent entrance into the water and result in the forward motion of the small boat and its passenger.
The dark of the night causes the surroundings to look eerie and obscured. The electric lights along the canal does little to pierce through the heavy darkness enfolding everywhere. Such nights are rare and considered bad for luck, especially to boaters, partly because it means bad business. If the man driving the boat is not deep in His own thoughts, He would be quick to reach home and spent the night indoors, as it is the common reaction on ordinary times.
But no. He is so deep in thought that the looming darkness has got no effect on him. In fact, He is driving the boat so slowly that one can almost assume that He is on duty and carrying passengers on a slow cruise-tour. For so deep are His thoughts on a particular incident just a couple of hours before that nothing short of a sinking boat might draw Him out of his stupor..
But therein lies the reason.
It was late in the afternoon, almost evening when He was quickly jolted to his senses by one lady requiring his services.
"Sir, take me one round- but the slowest one you have ever" she had said.
His mind still in a daze caused by the warm sun and the fresh dullness of a brief afternoon nap, He rather instinctively cast out the tether and drew His pole, starting the journey. The time of the day was pleasant, and the wind just right, promising the fulfilment of the lady's wishes. Really the trip could seem to drag on forever. The lady just sat in the middle of the boat, still as a statue as He pulled the boat out of the small dock.
The trip itself, (while true- it was the slowest one he'd ever done) seemed to be a most eventful one. Even though He had done the rounds a thousand times now, each crook or corner suddenly felt so alien, and he almost felt scared, as if it is the first time doing the rounds. There were even times where He was so unsure of Himself, of what to do that He just stood and froze.
The fault was the lady's. It started off soon after they started the journey.After a few minutes of slow-moving through the canal, the lady suddenly broke the calm and quiet of the disappearing afternoon with a scream. Frightened and shocked out of His wits, He looked to the middle of the boat, where the lady was perched at the side of the boat, her entire body rigid and straight, while her head was pointed eastwards, which showed Him the direction she was looking at. He quickly looked at the same direction, and then reacted in quite the opposite way as compared to the lady. He just felt confused, and a mostly relieved. It was nothing after all. Far off eastwards where the canal opens up larger, a flock of birds could be seen diving from the skies, and then skimmed the water, stayed parallel with the surface for a few seconds and then took off high up again. Such a sight is common to His eyes, and while it is a pretty attractive sight to the usual tourists and passengers, it does not prompt them to react the same way as the lady.
But a closer look at the lady's body language made him a little bit curious. What sort of a person looks at a flock of birds with such absolute, undivided attention? At that moment, the boat swayed just a little towards the west, and the lady immedietely moved to compensate for the lost of angle. But by doing that, He gained a full view of her face (the sides of it, at least). And its features right then made Him all the more curious. Her head was tilted up towards the sky a little, to gain a better view of the birds as they did their cycle of touch-the-water-for-a-bit-then-fly. Her eyes, though the color right then could not be determined, were wide and still as stone. Her mouth was slightly open. Thus the entire feature of her face caused Him great puzzlement. It showed, as plain as day, the lady to be in a completely rapturous condition.
"Isn't it absolutely beautiful, the way that flock of birds fly?" She had said to him.
It did not end with that. Throughout the whole of the journey he was repeatedly shocked out of his wits and got more and more confused as the lady showed an impeccable tendency to be amazed at the simplest, commonest things. One time it was a slab of stone which was part of a building structure that looked as if it might fall off any minute. Another time it was a section of a building which had one part painted an entirely different color than the rest of the building, resulting in an almost ugly feel of the structure, to the eyes of the boatman. But not to the lady. She stared at that section for almost at least a good half an hour, commenting on how wonderful the building looked, standing out of all other buildings. For the first part of the journey the boatman was trying to control the rising annoyance for the lady's attentions.
It was the later part of the journey that he started to feel differently. For with each "amazing" thing that the lady found fascinating, he was forced to accompany those moments with her, forced to view things through her eyes. And slowly, he had started to grow more and more interested in the things the lady found fascinating. It was also due to the lady's absolute enthusiasm at those things that he found himself sharing it sometimes. A single lone lily pad in the middle of the canal was the subject of fascination for a good amount of time. A broken fountain which does not spray water as it should be was the study of waterworks. (it was also then that he was shocked that the lady had pointed out a distinct pattern in the spraying of the water that actually made it look distinctly beautiful.)
Then came the new sensations. The lady had so effectively altered the way he see the world that everything he so normally see now feels completely alien. Now, each bend of the canal revealed such a new picture, a new experience that he felt scared. Not in a timid-fearful way, but in an awed-revered way... And there was always the lady to share the experience with him.
Suddenly it was the end of the journey. They reached the dock late in the evening, with the sun setting so low that most of the boats had already been tied in for a long time, waiting for tomorrow to be used again.
The lady hopped out unto the wooden dock and turned around. Looking at him right in the eye, she smiled a soft golden smile and said thank you.
For the first time, he was able to see her eyes clearly, albeit just for a few seconds.
But they were the brownest eyes he had ever seen.
