The Trail to Spring

Chapter 2

It was about eleven in the morning when I descended into the kitchen from my room upstairs to have breakfast. My parents knew that lately I had been catching up on the sleep I had lost while my finals were going on and so didn't disturb me much without any dire need. Today, Mom was washing the dishes when I walked up to her and hugged her tightly. Dad had already left for office.

"You have grown up," she said as a manner of greeting.

"Good morning to you, too," I said as I plonked down on the dining chair. Breakfast was boring as always.

"It seems like just yesterday when you started to walk on your own," Mom continued, rubbing her last dish clean and stashing it in the dish rack.

I tried to avert my attention to the bowl of cereal in front of me. I knew where this was going.

"Children do grow up so fast."

"Ma, I am seventeen years old. I'll be fine," I found myself protesting automatically, "We have already talked about this. Don't you think it's about time that I learnt to travel on my own?"

"I know, dear," she said, "But I just can't get over my fear that someday I could lose you too."

I looked up at her. She was standing there, looking at me with a kind of smile that made a part of my heart ache with an unwelcome familiar pain.

"I know," I whispered back.

"I couldn't help but think about him today. I wish he was here with us."

I finished up my cereal and went out to our back yard. My eyes first travelled to the empty nest in the neem tree. A family of Baya weavers had made it their home a few months ago and I had spent countless days sitting on the grass and listening to the little chicks chirping away merrily, almost sounding as if they were trying out for a choir. It had been quite a few days since they had abandoned their nest, leaving me alone in the garden once more. Hence today I felt an uncomfortable sense of loneliness creeping up inside of me.

I sat down on the grass and tried to think about my big trip tomorrow but I just couldn't divert my thoughts away from what Mom had just told me. Next month, it would be fourteen years since my elder brother, Arjun had run away from home. As far as I can remember, the reason was petty enough, nothing that couldn't be solved with a little discussion. He wanted to roam and play around but Mom and Dad used to force him to study, caging him inside the labyrinth of books like a bird is stuck in a cage. So he retaliated by running away and never ever coming back. It was a hard bargain for us to take in.

Most of the memories that I have of my brother are either made up or I had heard it from Grandpa, since I was too young to remember much myself. But one memory that I do remember is on the night he had run away.

We shared the same room back then and I had woken up late at night one day to see Arjun packing up his school backpack. He had told me that he was going to see the world and that he couldn't achieve his dreams by staying with us. On hearing him, I had given him Blackie (my favourite black coloured teddy bear) so that it could keep him safe. Arjun had then promised me that he would return one day and hand Blackie back to me himself. After that, he had put on his backpack and simply walked away, just like that. For the next few days, my parents engaged the police, a host of private detectives, anyone who could help us in bringing him back. They searched far and wide for him but all efforts were futile. Dada had seemingly vanished from the world just like he had vanished from our lives. Unfortunate as this was, it is this single memory that I turned to again and again to remind myself that I did have a brother and that he is not another concoction of Grandpa's wild imaginations.

Since it's been so long without him, most of us have been able to move on with life. My parents and Grandpa hardly talk about him anymore and I don't feel like doing so either. I wonder about him only during those small vulnerable moments when I feel particularly lonely, somewhat like today. Everyone's life has a side-offering of grief. The only difference was that it was a main course for us. There is no reason to dwell in the past.

After a while, Mom came up to me and seeing that I had nothing better to do than to hang around in the back yard, she gave me some chores.

"Take out the clothes from the washing machine and hang them out on the line to dry," she said. I nodded my head.

"And call up Grandpa and check how he is. He hasn't been feeling well lately. Try to talk with him for at least a few minutes. You hardly ever visit him nowadays, poor man."

I put on The Octopus's Garden by the Beatles on my phone, stuck on my head phones and started rinsing out the wet clothes out of the washing machine. The song reminded me of the deep blue sea of Puri and the soft sand of the beaches where it feels so nice to stand with your naked feet. I imagined my friends alongside me, cracking jokes and eating pani puris. And with my mind lost in the melody of the oceans, it took me no time to finish hanging out the clothes on the line.

The song had just finished for the third time and I was contemplating how to start my conversation with Grandpa when I realised that Dad was calling me.

"Hey, your mother is not picking up her phone," he said as soon as I picked up his call.

I could sense that he was kind of tensed by his voice.

"What is it?," I asked.

"Grandpa is feeling ill. Come quickly to the General hospital," he said and ended the call before I could respond.

I stared at my smartphone, not wanting to believe what I had just heard. An uncomfortable sensation began to grow in my stomach. I tried calling Dad back but he wouldn't pick up. Desperate, I called out Mom who was cleaning the attic and told her what Dad had just conveyed to me.

The following few minutes seemed to pass by in a blur as we hurriedly dressed up and caught a cab. I couldn't think of anything else other than about Grandpa lying helplessly in a hospital bed as we sped through the traffic laden roads of Kolkata. Mom was surfing on her smartphone, her mind clearly elsewhere and her eyes sparkling with tears. I wanted to comfort her but how could I do that when I did not find a proper way to comfort even myself. My chest felt so heavy. I looked out of the window of the car and tried to calm down.

This was not supposed to happen.

I could still picture Grandpa, sitting on his reclined chair in his house and reading either the Bibhutibhushan or the Sharadindu omnibus. I would go and sit beside him and after a while, we would walk around to the back of his house and water the flowers that he had grown in his flower bed. He had recently been growing lilacs and I have often noticed him talking with them.

"Plants can hear us and feel us, pie," he would tell me, "If you give them the love and warmth they deserve, they grow up to be one of the most magnificent specimens of their species."

He really liked his lilacs and had been waiting eagerly for them to bloom for the past one year. I always felt like Grandpa had found an able companion in his flowers.

Author's Note: Do you like flowers? If so, what kind do you like the most? Personally, I really like roses.

Hope you enjoyed today's chapter. It would be nice to know what you think. Cheers!