A Timeless Love

Yesterday, while walking down the corridors of Connaught Place, I saw a touching sight.

Two octogenarians were enjoying what clearly looked like a leisurely post-tea stroll.

Hand in hand, they looked the picture of love personified, the etched wrinkles only adding character to their time-worn faces.

The gentleman, attired in a shirt and loose trousers, had a small diary tucked neatly under his arm, while with the other hand, he gallantly held onto two colorful shawls, lest the evening decided to act nippy, in which case they could keep the chill at bay.

The lady, dressed gaily in a long, flowing violet-colored skirt and matching flip flops, clutched a small pouch, no doubt containing some currency.

A child, no more than 8, approached them, his arms covered with red rose buds.

As is their wont, he singled out the elderly couple, pulling at the lady’s skirt.

With a girlish laugh, she patted his head, and proceeded to make way with her husband.

The child was not to be that easily shaken-off.

Despite the lady’s vehement protests that they did not want to buy his roses, he looked like the sorts who refuse to hear ‘No’ for an answer.

And then he must have said something, because next I remember the lady tugging at her husband, who all this while, had an amused look on his vizened face.

A tender look replaced the amusement on his face, and the gentleman lovingly pushed back an errant strand of silver hair that had come out of the lady’s neatly coiffed hair.

Looking down at the child, he proceeded to grasp the posy of roses that was proffered to him; however, his wife shook her head and signaled ‘one.’

Much to the child’s diappointment, the elderly gentleman took one blood-red rose, and paid for it.

Off the child went to find his next customer.

All the attention of the gentleman now rested on his aldy love.

A gentle look on his face, he whispered something into his wife’s left ear – she blushed as prettily as a young bride, and still flushed with radiance, accepted the single rose he held out to her.

Mouthed a ‘Thank you,’ and with me still watching, she walked off, hand in hand, with the man she loved.

Who loved her back equally, if not more.

The sunset into which they walked, made a fitting background....