Eva had a list of qualities as her priorities.
She took out her parker pens and started writing something on her note pad as soon as we reached Khoksar and sat down to refresh ourselves near a small river flowing across the Lahaul valley in its width pouring its water into the giant river Chandra that flowed along the valley in its length.
Khoksar: The River Along
"Why do you write with a parker?" - I asked Eva as she finished her writing and closed her note pad.
"Why? ... Because I have them!" - she look surprised.
"But they are very costly!" - I clarified my point.
"Quality comes not for free on earth." - she smiled.
"I wrote my exams with the cheapest pen available in the market and I topped my district in my high school." - I stated.
"That was the quality of your mind, not of your pen." - she had dipped her legs in the speedily flowing water of the river getting a free massage out of it.
Khoksar: The River Across
"Isn't that quality?" - I pointed to the free massage that her legs were getting.
"It is." - she agreed.
"But it's free." - I stated a fact again.
"But I can't get my parker pens free!" - she took one of them in her fingers lovingly.
"Do you love them?" - I asked her with my eyes looking deep into hers.
"Yes, I do." - she confessed.
"Do you love me?" - I asked again.
She kept looking into my eyes for one full minute, and then said - "Right at the moment, I do."
"You didn't add 'right at the moment' for your parker pens!" - I drew her attention to the difference between her two statements.
"They have quality." - she showed one to me.
Eva's List of Qualities and One of Her Parker Pens
I took her pen in my hand and felt its touch for a moment, then wrote a few lines with it on her note pad. I had to accept to myself that it did have something in it that I had never felt in any of the pens I had written with till date. I gave it back to her along with her note pad.
"Doesn't it have it?" - she was curious.
"What?" I looked toward her.
"Quality!" - she smiled.
"Don't I have it?" - I was enjoying looking at her face.
"What?" - she raised her eyes toward me.
"Quality!" - I started laughing.
"Nope!" - she kissed me tight on my lips and said again after she was over - "You don't have a single thing in you that I can count as part of my list of qualities. But then is it my list of qualities only that makes a thing quality?" - she went into a pensive mood.
I left her alone and ran away leaping along the river like a deer - an act that I always did whenever I was in the lap of hills all through my life... my way to play the game of life!
US $250.42
