Bande à part

[This is a ridiculous story. It is based on a scene in Godard's movie 'Bande a part']

A minute. The three of them were sharing that one minute together. A romantic girl in black sweater and two boys wearing old hats. The young souls were wearing their bodies loosely. It was as if they had not yet decided on the uniform they want to wear for their lives. Perhaps, they wished not to be bound by one uniform at all. Right now the boys were wearing the bodies of hollywood film stars and the girl was wearing a radiant body whose sole purpose is to extinguish in love.

They were seating snugly in a cafe booth. The young sits close exuberantly, the old indifferently. The youth in its modern temper was sipping at Colas. It was a moment of awkward silence that triggered it. The minute of silence. There was nothing to do and hence they must sit in silence.

एक दो तीन...

Words stopped. Lips were persed. Everybody was keen on knowing who breaks first.

The silent minute was to last forever. She had said that the silence will bring with it lifetime's worth of waves of feelings hitting at the banks of our conscience.

( A moment's divergence please - For a moment there, it seemed a ghost was speaking through her. The words coming out of her sounded wise, but her face remained cheerful in purposelessness - an expression considered to signify naivete.)

Yet no one was looking inside. everyone was looking at each other.. eyes into eyes.. overlapping globes.. If eyes could kiss.. watery painful kisses. Gazes were as if playing the game of fencing. With a sharp squeeze at times she would jab at the boy with the tilted hat. At other moment, she would cower under the weight of two admiring gazes, imagining her naked.

And then it struck her.. who knows the time? where has the time gone? Has the minute gone past? Or has it just begun? If all three intersecting gazes were locked in a jealous embrace, who was minding time?
She notices that one of the boys was looking rather shabby with a trace of facial hair showing. She wondered if the hair was there before the minute started. Sure, no hair can grow that fast, can it? The boy was balding a bit.. maybe he's put some hair growth potion accidentally on his chin rather than his scalp. That stupid hat.. who was he fooling? hat = baldness. Everybody knows that.

At an indeterminate moment, one of the boys tried to come close to her. In his stylish aggression, he put his elbow by the edge of the table. That caused him to fall right off and into her bosom. He had always dreamed of it, but not in the last one minute. She would have rather had the other boy against her bosom. But she was happy nevertheless. They burst out laughing. The minute was over in 36 seconds.