Here All Along

chapter - 2

Growing up a child, i hated the overbearing presence of parental neglect in my life but through the passage of time, I learned how to live with it. It was my home and I thought there was no place in the world that offered better life for a little boy than his own home, no matter how cold and empty it is.

But after Win was born, Naurburi became the sun that promised to bestow it's warmth upon me. I had a place now that could be better than my home.

Soon, I realised visiting my grandparents over holidays wasn't enough, I needed to see Win more. Aunt Irin once said the only way Win would grow up to remember me was if I stayed with him while he grew up. Later, she told me she was just joking but she should have known better than joking with a six year old boy of serious disposition. It imprinted on my mind and i decided, I'd stay with my grandparents who actually had time for me while also be close to Win, the boy who all my time was for now.

I tried becoming a rebel, throwing up things everytime my parents behaved like parents, meaning stayed too indulged in their jobs. After aunt Chu, mom and dad couldn't reconcile but nonetheless stayed together for me.

That was my family, broken and scraped but tied up and plastered so as to look normal as any family. But normal families did not reek of broken bottles of beer and swallowed toxicity. Normal families smelled like molten cookies, freshly chopped cinammon and sweet milk, ripened oranges and funny fragrance of infant powders and may be, even diapers.

Win had a normal family and i craved to be a part of it.

Granny decided that it was not the proper environment for a child in Chirang (the town in which i lived with my parents) and four years after Win was born, my parents had no choice but to leave me back at Naurburi with my grandparents while they both were promoted as senior supervisors at the city hospital. It was the only right thing to do, they agreed heavily. I wondered if they would have wanted to hear how the weight of abandonment pressed heavy on my heart. But they had a schedule late that night so grandpa had come to take me with him.

I remembered it was raining that night and mom tucked me in the car seat, fastened my belt, kissed all over my face with desperation and whispered a sorry that barely made its way out of her mouth. But I knew she had said it. I also felt it against my cheek when she kissed me, the dampness of her eyes.

I wished she could have done more than saying sorry. It did comfort me though, to know that they at least realise they were bad parents to me. But before the sharpness of air could jab at my skin, I engineered my thoughts on my new life in Naurburi, the small village where a small boy lives who told me once in his broken garbles, he would buy the world for me.

"Wud you bayee the wald fol me tuh?" he had asked back to which I could only chuckle.

Only a small child could say such things. Or, a man madly in love.

I was done being a small child. And i certainly was not a man madly in love.

Not yet.

....

Four years later

I had celebrated my tenth birthday a week ago. Mom told me on phone that she and dad wanted to be there but i knew she just said so I wouldn't feel bad. I actually did not but grandma would keep asking me if I missed home. Perhaps she drew the impression from the fact that I stayed quiet on my birthday. I did but because I missed Win and phi Earth who had gone to visit their cousins for the Christmas and couldn't make it back because the weather there was too harsh to make a journey.

Anyhow, the truth was i didn't miss home much. At first I did. I remembered before Win was born, this village didn't hold much meaning for me. I would not be sad about skipping school nor would joy fill me for spending the holidays in Naurburi. At that time, I didn't know if a word existed for the way I felt - indifferent. I was the silent kid you could carry in your pockets and sell across the borders and he wouldn't even ask why, much less resist. I have no idea why I was like that but I remember I liked it, being so silent to the point that i became a mere audience, looking at everyone else playing their parts on the stage. I was six and yet, already detached from the world. Perhaps I was born detached from the world. Perhaps what I just said makes absolutely no sense.