Sakuras of Paris

After the UPSC interview, when there is a sigh of relief when this mammoth of a task is gotten done with, my friends took me to their favourite book shop to get me a copy of Murakami. It was Kafka on the Shore which I relished, Johny Walker with his eerie cats, my adorable Kawamura, Nakata's world of his own, Miss Saeki and her ghost lands and Sakura, whom Kafka thinks he was destined to meet, Sakura the character and the entire pavement of Sakura - the Japanese Cherry Blossoms.

When I gave this book to you, Murakami became a shared author, buying more of him, and making notes on the edges, treasuring them as books of shared love. Thus we shared Sakura. Japan has always been like Paris to us, one visited and lived in amongst its most beautiful street lights, the other dreamt and weaved by Murakami's words.

I remember when I first came home, you showed me a canvas with Sakura affixed in metal. Before that, one evening in Mussoorie, that kind of an evening when it embraces night so soon, and Dehradun glows like stars on earth below, we found a tiny attic like craft shop where they sold old artefacts. We remember saying we will go back there, we never did, we never saw it after. The only testament of its existence is our plate with that single Sakura flower waiting for its tree. It shall be a winter away, but the branch shall come.

When I with these lovely ladies saw the trees lined up, my friends' laughter and beauty reflecting in the pinkness of each blossom, and I couldnt stop myself from calling you. This was incredible, but it was not the restrain of Murakami and the unsaid terseness that his novels have, it was like my friends, you and me, joy and the occassional sun. May be sometime when the Sakuras are in full bloom, let us go there grey haired, to see the pain each petal paints, the numbness of its existence, but at the same time its happiness of a thrift summer, but a summer to count on at least.