♪ ♫ ...Like the sunshine ♫

He thrust out his finger through the rolled down glasses of the window as if playfully poking an invisible someone in the air. his feeble finger slashing through the speeding air. The chill in the air was back ... that time of the year was back.

The 'City of joy' was unnervingly silent at that deathly hour of the night. The city's Victorian streets sans the usual bustle and the notorious traffic was a breeze for the taxi driver. In the hope to pack up for the day the driver veered through the empty roads as fast as he could.

The mood at the back seat of the taxi was in stark contrast. He was unhurried now. A sense of unfulfillment had become complete within him. His journey went on but there was no destination in mind any longer.

As the rickety taxi's speedometer clocked 100 kms an hour, light posts along the smoggy streets whizzed back at tremendous speeds. Painful memories , however, swept slowly across his mind. The unperturbed, nonplussed expression on his face hardly changed. The stench of ammonia waft across the region which meant close he was drawing close to the end of his ride. The smell was pungent enough to make even the callous taxi man flinch in disgust but strangely didn't elicit even the slightest repulse from him.The booze had dampened his senses or maybe he was just too lost in his preoccupations. 

The sleepy driver, swerved alarmingly on a turn that was supposed to lead them towards the destination. Lost in his streaming thoughts he was oblivious of the fact that the driver had failed to negotiate the sharp turn and the taxi toppled like a beast off balance. For a few excruciating moments he saw the gravelled road and the dispersed halo of the street lamps alternately in the tumbling unevenness of the yellow glow cast by the rolling car's headlights until the car frictioned to a deadening halt.

As the rays of the following morning swept away the last remains of the dark night, the cops stood at the cordoned site of the crash. The passenger at the back seat had suffered a broken neck and could not sustain the injury. From within the mangled body of the taxi, from the back seat, among other things was retrieved a burnt bouquet of trampled lilies with a small note on it saying "Happy Anniversary".