I happily went to sleep and
woke up early the next morning, that, if you can call it morning, sometime
between night & dawn.
The other times I wake up at that
hour is when we would be going on a vacation and have to catch an early train,
my mom would wake me up during those times, where I used to have a huge urge to go
back to sleep in spite of the excitement.
This was different; I felt full
of vigour & energy and didn’t have that urge to slump back.
I silently went up to our terrace
& sat on the dangerously thin railing, taking in deep breaths of early
morning air, which has a cool untainted rawness to it.
It felt as if the lungs were
thanking me, taking in huge bouts of air. I sat there thinking of her. A part
of me feared that everything was a dream, a pleasant, happy dream, which graced
me just like the lovely breeze that was tapping the nape of the neck.
Yeah, maybe it was just a dream,
because the day, which didn’t start so well ended up in the best possible way,
something which doesn’t happen often.
I had decided to go for a jog
just to feel good, after all it’s not daily someone as lazy as me wakes up
feeling so fresh. Just as I descended to go for the jog, I noticed my cycle parked
safely in our front yard, my faithful beast, confirming my suspicions that I
was just dreaming, if it was true, the cycle should still be at school.
An unknown numbness crept into my body, eating away the previously felt energy as it progressed, giving rise to a sudden pang of melancholy and even before I knew what was happening, tears trickled down my cheeks, as I felt I lost someone I had known forever.
An unknown numbness crept into my body, eating away the previously felt energy as it progressed, giving rise to a sudden pang of melancholy and even before I knew what was happening, tears trickled down my cheeks, as I felt I lost someone I had known forever.
----O----
I cycled vigorously to the junior
college, letting the gravity propel me on the downhill road, thankful to the
hour for not having the need to apply brakes as there were hardly any vehicles,
thereby making the soft morning breeze hit my face turbulently. I parked my
cycle and started running in the track half heartedly.
'I remember her face so vividly,
remember holding her hands, remember her embrace, is my imagination so
lifelike? Or am I just getting mad?'
I settled down to peace with myself, no
more of these imaginations and thinking of her. Just concentrate on the workout. The
jog, it didn’t last much time, though, the first day is always hard, after some
distance it became more of a brisk walk than a sprint.
Just as I returned home panting,
my dad was coming out to get flowers for his daily Pooja, while having left a
vessel at the municipal water tap, which comes into our home, thereby saving us
from the usual scuffles for the municipal water from the taps in the streets, which
one can see, even more exaggerated in the Indian movies.
He eyed me suspiciously,
naturally, for it was a daily headache, waking me up, undertook by both my dad
and mom, as it took them several attempts before I actually woke up. I almost ran into
the bathroom, saying over my shoulder, ‘went for a jog.’
After my bath, I stopped at the
bathroom mirror, clouded due to the steam from hot water, bare-chested and just
wrapped in a towel waist below. I rubbed a small surface of the mirror clean with my hand
to check the reflection of my face, like I always do, but for the first time I had noticed a small dent in the skin near my right eyebrow. How did I get it?
I went to my mom and asked her about
the same.
She threw me a curious glance and
said, ‘You, true to your nature, couldn’t stay put at one place even when you
were a toddler. You once had a fall from the turned over water cauldron which
earned you that dent.’
‘What was I doing on a turned over
cauldron?’
‘Indeed! Right? We have had the same doubt; high
time you realized it. Anyway, what excited you to suddenly take note of it? You
know what it means?’
‘That I’ve been an idiot all the
time?’ I offer.
‘It means you’ve come to the
height of adolescence,' and she added with an obvious hint of humor in her expression, 'And it might also mean that you have met a new girl.’
‘Haha, very funny.’ I said aloud
while thinking to myself, if only I really met her.
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