It was early dawn on a Saturday as I stepped out of my gate. I wrote ‘early dawn’ but in fact everything was under a thick cover of smog. It was my fourth day in London and yet I had to keep myself from enjoying the early dawn of this city. I heard that London was a bit too smoggy but I couldn’t know how much smoggy this place was without seeing it with my own eyes. Now after witnessing it for the fourth day in a row, I got quite used to it.

I walked quite a distance from my mansion in the smog. Then I thought it would be much better if I had taken my car instead of making my little journey by foot. So I walked back to my garage and took my Mercedes out after switching on its fog-lamps.

The road was too quiet. Had it been in the working hours, it would have required golden luck to find my way in the traffic. But now I carried on with a decent speed. I was feeling very lonely, so I turned the car audio on. But the company I was seeking for was still missing. It would have been so much better if……

SSKEEETT……………

I had to step hard on the brakes as I turned a corner. In front me there was a person standing in middle of the road with an overcoat on. The figure came to the windscreen of my car and requested to open the window. My first thought was to back away. But, instead of backing away I switched off the music and opened the glass. Then I saw the person with the overcoat.

I, then, could have been knocked down by feathers. If Aphrodite herself had then come to me, she might have had to wait! Such was the charm of the, as anyone would have guessed by now, lady. I, like a machine, invited her to warm the seat next to mine.

I again started the engine and moved on. For some minutes, I kept mum. Then I asked the beauty, which she was, where would she like to go. She answered that she was going to the railway station and if I could drop her there she would be very grateful.

‘Do you like music?’ I then asked.

‘Who doesn’t? But will you mind if you don’t play it now’.

‘I won’t. But will you mind telling me why are you going to the station?’

‘I was going to my house in Bristol. I came to London on some important work. And by the way, I am not going to the station. My uncle will receive me from the gate of it, and then we will go in his car’.

‘I see. You stay with your uncle, then?’

‘Yes. But what have you to do with that?’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing’.

‘Are you from London?’ She asked after some seconds passed without conversation.

‘No, I am not. I just come here twice or thrice a week to see how my business is going. Actually I am from Vienna’.

‘Do you stay alone?’

‘No, I have a brother’.

‘Can I ask you something if you don’t mind?’

‘Please’.

‘Why don’t you get married to someone? You are so handsome that almost anyone will fall for you’.

I sat silent for a while.

‘Perhaps you didn’t like my question’, she sounded upset.

‘No, nothing of that kind. I was wondering that how would you react if someone put the same question to you. You know, you are just beyond words. You are so beautiful that if I use the term beautiful, it will be an insult to your beauty. The why are you single yet? Why don’t you get married?’

I don’t think she was ready for this question. She was absolutely dumbfounded. Then, after sometime, she spoke softly, ‘Have you ever loved someone?’

‘Not yet’, I replied. ‘You?’

‘Not yet’.

Our eyes met. I don’t know how was the look on my eyes but I can tell that her eyes had something on them which could have hold a lover for centuries. I saw the smog rising before my eyes. London has never seemed more beautiful…

Then I realised that we had reached the railway station. I pulled the brakes of my car in front of the gate. The beautiful person who was sitting beside me took leave with a soft bye and thanks. I, then, started for my house before the traffic could start jamming the roads. On my way back, I again felt that I was missing a company that I wished for. It would have been so much better if……

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