"It happens," she said, her face wearing curious shadows, pitch only torn open by the little glitter that could find its way from the streetlight, through the wooden zebra blinds on the greasy glass window, into the room. "You're not the only one whose mind may be a little unhinged in these times," she added with an oddly intimate smile, a smile I couldn't resist getting affected by, finding benevolent and a little sensuous. Wiping a little of the water that covered her face like sweat with the bright flower painted handkerchief that lodged in one of her hands, she said, "It wasn't your fault."
It began a night last week, one that began like every other, one that changed everything about the ones that would follow. The world is in a lockdown. Mum is a doctor, so her workload is enormous, and it'd been around a month since she had been getting night shifts at the hospital. She would leave home at night, covering herself from north to south, and come back early morning, tired and exasperated from the moans and pains of the patients and their loved ones, and from the silence of the dead that found their way into her corridor. I, on the other hand, had nothing much to do, save a few hours of work-from-home and a full time job of contemplating about how lonely the previous months had been. I used to go to bed at around twelve, but I would sleep not before two or three or sometimes four, would burn my eyes with my phone screen, looking at random videos, talking to random people, scrolling down random posts, running through random stories, and overthink about the random things that I did in the day, or maybe days or months or a lifetime ago; the usual in the lockdown. It would have been around one, when all that echoed in the room was the sound of the howls of some dogs out on the street and the whispers the fan let out, when it popped up in the notifications: "Two Years Ago, on this day..." And I felt a hand tap my shoulder, and my ears feel a breath that said, "It is okay."
I, at once, jumped out of the bed onto the floor and ran to turn on the light switches. There was no one in the room. The howls had stopped, the fan was inaudible, and all that screamed were my own heavy breaths. The red velvety sofa, the grey fibrous carpet, the creased sheet the now empty bed wore, and the chair that shied away in one corner of the room, all bespoke of me being alone in the room. "I've been lonely for a long time now, I guess," I said to myself, before switching the lights back off, and springing onto my bed.
Technology really works well in the aspect of preserving whatever has been. Two years ago, on that very day, a few of my college friends and I caught our train to Shimla; it was supposed to be our last trip before we became adults and got lost in the world of corporate. I was told to never look back at the trip, and I did quite a good job until that night. It's actually funny how I was able to almost caste the memory out of my head for even this long. I clicked on the notification and a whole catalogue of reminiscence flashed up on the screen. Us laughing while taking a stroll on Mall Road, playing around while everything on The Ridge wore snow, Aayu savouring the steam coming out of our food to find warmth, Siya hugging her travel bag for same, Javed wearing a life jacket with his plump face all red as fear, me looking at a little golden circlet and smiling while wearing the same, and many other bits that we relished of that trip. A thin chain of nomad tears ran out of my eyes, as I kept swiping and living different parts of the journey, before the moon that peeped through the window blinds, often hiding away behind the clouds, eventually found me asleep.
"How the hell did your parents agree, man?" Aayu asked, shouting wildly to fight the loud scream that the train that was passing by ours let out.
"Did they?" said Javed, with the same loudness, and we all laughed. I don't know how long we did, but I could hear it until a few seconds later I woke up the next morning. The blinds had been opened and the full fierceness of sunlight fell right on my face.
"Morning," said mum as I sat up on my bed, still unable to snatch myself out of last night, and what happened two years ago. The integrity of my weight seemed to have thickened all upon my chest. These months had been lonely, yes, but I felt such a strong urge to meet my friends only that day. And with this strong emotion of loneliness wavering around in my mind, accompanying the regret I had once buried down, the sun soon embraced the depths of the west, and night showed up.
