the boy with the blue eyes

We sat at the side of a dirt lane one summer evening. In front of us, paddy fields stretched as far as the eye could see making it seem endless. The sky loomed above us- blue and grey swirling together to form a curious swatch of colours reconciled amongst the clouds. All around us the crops danced with the gentle breeze that sang with the bending branches; you could hear the rows of shallow water trickle and ripple with every breath the sky blew.

I sat beside him that summer evening, as crickets chirped in the backdrop and flies murmured about us, as the sun dipped down the valley until it seemed it would be buried underneath all this green and brown and yellow. My skirt dropped to my ankles, shielding my scabbed, sun tanned knees which I pulled up to my chest and rested my chin on. The thin fabric made it possible for me to feel even the slightest change in the wind. He was clad in nothing but a white singlet and dirtied black trousers which he had wore for the whole day's work. Unlike myself, who had squeezed and compressed my figure together, he laid back on his arms relaxed. His legs stretched out before him, with one leg propped up on his foot and his knee bent. His eyes were closed, though not squeezed shut; no, almost as if somebody had put their fingers on his eyelids and gently closed his eyes. His figure blocked the setting sun until all that was left of it was rays of gold shining out from behind him.

I looked at him for the longest time; I looked at the way the wind ran over his messy hair which had been held stiff with wax at the beginning of the day. I looked at the way his chest rose with every slow breath he took, how his shirt stretched over his rib cage when he inhaled and flowed out loose when he exhaled. I looked at his feet and his shoes which had been abandoned just so they could feel the warmth of a country he's never known; just so his toes could be speckled with the dirt of a nation which wasn't his homeland.

And amidst all this looking, he opened his eyes and I stopped breathing for the second time ever in my life.

I looked at this tall, handsome, young man who sat beside me on this summer evening. It's true that he was a little too skinny still, and a little too lanky, but his arms were strong, and his shoulders broad enough to shelter any young lady from any danger. But if you asked me what probably made him so different from the others, I would say it was his eyes. He had a good nose, and soft pink lips, but his eyes seemed to set him apart. It gave him more depth.When you looked into them, you would swear that oceans and seas and skies combined would never have made you realise the wonder and beauty the colour blue held in them, than when you lifted your eyes and looked straight into his.

I had never seen blue eyes before. How could I? Where would I have seen such eyes? In my little rice farming village, where could you find a foreigner who didn't want to kill you or pillage your home for enough time that you could look into his face and his eyes. In my little rice farming village, where time was relative to the roosters who lived among us in our wooden huts on stilts- how could you discover something as out of the ordinary as eyes which looked like water trapped behind marbles.

I have only stopped breathing twice in my life- the first was when my house was burned to ashes and the second time was when I looked into his very eyes.

SIDENOTE: In writing this, I am not attempting to romanticise war or the horrifics of war; it is about love for sure, and the rest is all up to your interpretation :)