Sandcastles | A Virat Kohli Fanfiction

20 • the lakes

Kavya's POV

Ever wondered how it seems when certain things happen to you twice - back to back - and even though the times are different, it leaves you with a stir of déjà vu and an unusual familiarity?

I experienced the same with the coming of August and thereby, the coming of summer with it. Because for me, it was a repetition of the weather few months back in India.
And just like how Goa (and Bangalore, too) has its summer showers by the end of the season; London offered the same perks.

The children in my neighborhood here in London had a different sweetness to their laughter, one that had been rising upon the spring tide, coming to full vibrancy in those brilliant eyes. The delight which summer holidays brought was just same everywhere around the world.

I occasionally played hopscotch with them on weekends; we stole chalks and stones and drew squares on the crumbling street and numbered them.

Working longer and harder at the same time, I aced three projects in a row through the months of September and October.

In the late October, I bought a sparkling silver sedan car which wouldn't have been possible without the sudden increment and other monetary rewards I got for my research portfolio.

Now it was easier and convenient to travel across the city — be it for work, amusement or simply for buying groceries.

Dad sent a beautiful present via postal mail to congratulate me. It was a new blank journal and a box of cassettes. I also received a handwritten note in the parcel,

"You're free like the fire and still like ice. I know how thoughts hover around your mind all day and are lost before you even fully think on them. There's nothing more valuable to give you except this diary for you to note all your heart's spurs and miseries. But that isn't your real gift. That little box of cassettes is. Those are the tapes that I recorded when your mother sang — in the kitchen while making my favourite dishes or in the evening when we watched the sunset from our rooftop. I listened to them all these years, never letting you find them because I had been waiting for this day. The right time. The recordings are not just her voices but her breaths. I am giving her breaths to you. Keep them till your last ones. I love you. And she loved you more."

I didn't have a stereo to play the tapes. So I borrowed a Walkman from my neighbour and listened to the cassettes that whole night. I walked in my room — sometimes closing my eyes as if reaching out my hand to catch her empty voice, failing at every attempt — you see, you can't hold breaths, not with your hands atleast.

The sound of her chuckles when dad sang along with her, the backdrop of the tides crashing the shore and seagulls crooning as if they succeeded in making their young one learn how to fly — all of them shriveled my heart into their tight cold embrace, sending chills down my spine.

I never saw her, except her photographs and sketches my father drew. Now those sketches and monochromatic photographs had got the touch of colour with the sound of her voice on the canvas of my imagination. I had all of her with me.

I shed a series of tears, not bothering to wipe them. They dried from the warmth of my cheek as I fell asleep.

————

To speak of London, the only thing that I had not experienced was a ride in London Eye. For some weird reason — and that reason ain't claustrophobia — I freaked out at the very idea of sitting in a packed cabin and spinning around from an ever changing height!

I ditched all hangouts and meetups that were planned near or at London Eye because that's how scared I was. Honestly, heights; be it looking up or down, never scared me. I had done treks and hikes but something about London Eye didn't just seem okay.