Usually...unusual!

Usually, he walks by her house every morning...
Sweated, usually, after the morning jog...
That he has been doing every year...
Barring, of course, the season of rains;

Usual practice of walking by her house with a small garden at the front...
Spreading a sweet sight like a known fragrance...
And watching her maid cleaning the portico with water and broom...
Made his morning...
Sometimes, more often than not, he would see her sitting on the cane chair at the portico...
Sipping from warm cup...
On winter mornings,
Usually he would find her covered by a shawl...
And sitting outside
Under the soft sun...
The sight of her sitting there...had...over the years become a habit...
Much like his morning jog round the park;

He never talked to her
She also never talked to him...
But...usually when he would pass by her house he would invariably cast a glance at her house...
And she would also look at him...looking up from her newspaper or coffee-cup...
That was a ritual of sorts...

However,
He caught a bad kind of a cough once...
And the doc prescribed him rest and no morning jog...
He woke up but stayed on bed...took medicine...and missed his morning jog...
And the beautiful garden and the portico and the woman sitting there with her cup of coffee...
He missed the ritual...
He tried to imagine her exact posture...staying on bed...
Would she be wearing today that cream colored gown?
Would she be dangling her white stockinged legs?
He thought and got up from bed
And walked down stairs straight to his front door...
He felt the cold breeze of the morn...
He felt the north wind playing with the leaves of the deodar tree nearby...
He felt...
Someone walking by his house...
He winked
And saw a white stockinged woman wearing a pair of white tracks walking briskly by his house...
He looked at the woman...
She also looked at him...
And at that precise moment the church bell rang!