I was walking past the streets of Bombay when the sun suddenly hid behind the dark clouds, and soon the sky started weeping. I had no umbrella with me, so the first thing that came to my mind was to take shelter under the trees along the sidewalk. I ran under one of the densest trees as soon as possible and joined two homeless strangers. One of them was sitting on the bench. I sat next to him. The other was unconsciously sitting next to the tree trunk. As soon as the rain got louder, I heard the guy on the ground murmuring something, some sort of rhyme. But there was a pain in his voice, and just as the sky, his eyes started raining. I tried to resist but couldn’t hold myself any longer.

“Why is he crying?” I asked the other guy.

“Past is a devil sir!” He replied, staring pityingly at the other guy and continued, “rain brings prosperity to some while brings back the haunting memory to this poor guy.” He stopped and sighed.

Out of curiosity, I asked, “What happened to him?”

The other guy took a deep breath and said “Can you hear this sound coming from his heart?” I nodded. He paused and continued... “he is mourning… he mourns with the same tears and same rhyme every time it rains.”

“Mourns over what!?” I interrupted.

He was confusingly amazed by the fact of a stranger asking questions about a homeless man’s tears. He looked at me, then gazed at the other guy and took a deep breath.

“His tears are mourning over his love, his wife whom he lost 10 years ago. He paused again, wiped a tiny drop of tear that fell from his eyes… “It was a similar rainy night when destiny separated two lovers. God is sometimes too hard on some of its children.”

This came as a sudden shock to me. I had never seen such a pure form of love. I saw that day a beggar who was begging for love. In some deep corner of my heart. I wanted to know what happened to his wife. But the rain had stopped by that time. Soon I saw a police constable screaming at the two guys to leave the sidewalk, cursing at them. Both of them started grabbing their shabby blankets and some pennies. But some inner force persuaded me.

“But... how did his wife die?”

The guy smiled painfully and said, “She didn’t die… he sold her to a merchant for alcohol. He left, leaving me behind, stunned by the sudden claim he made. The guy I considered the protagonist of a romantic love story was now the antagonist of his story.