Ashes

Maybe Another Life

It was quite easy to sleep at night when dad used to tell fairy tales and make promises and plans about tomorrow. Sleeping felt like a time lapse and getting over it seemed to be the easiest part. Life happens to everyone and therefore sleeping becomes the toughest part. When we are young, people usually want us to sleep because we may shout and might even privatize world peace. When we grow older, we sell our sleeps to people who don't even belong in our lives but, for that moment, they seem to be everything to us. After a while, we don't have the time to sleep, as work conquers us. There after comes a time when we only sleep and forget about everything, everyone.

It's quite natural to us when things happen and take their usual course. But totally unnatural what those usual courses of life do to us right? Growing up does resolve the war between who you are and what you would turn into. To be honest, I won't take much of time. I am 70, lazing myself on a ventilator. Well, honestly it gets quite monotonous when you keep hearing the same sound of your heart again and again and again. My son is standing outside my ward and talking to the surgeons. He might be probably worrying as to when will I return home? Will I return home?I sacrificed my entire life to literature and every little experience that I had was surely worthwhile. We do make choices in life and often blame the situations that create them. One thing that I learnt is that, life is in motion all the time. It only stops for you when you die and only waits for you when you are about to relish the bitterness of this world. People promise to wait for you but do they? I would describe my life as a bridge between happiness and emptiness.

One fine day, I saw a girl standing near the bus stand. It was weird for me to use the word beautiful because I had never used it to describe any lady. I was on time. It was the last day of college and my last summer at that place. All I had decided in life till then was to simply look at this one person until time stops. I don't really know how to portray this but life seemed endless looking at her. I could have used a pretty good pickup line but I acted as if I was lost. The first words that came out of my mouth were, "Perfectly Beautiful". She laughed and boarded the bus. I was late for college that day when I realised that I was involved in a direct eye contact with a statue standing right in front of the bus stand. She was amazing and I could only remember her as an illustration in my mind. Well I always hoped to see her again in my life because I was a fool and firmly believed in destiny. After a while, when I moved here, I rented a place as my career called. Everything was going really great, until one fine day, a feminine voice yammered, "Hello! Mr., Wait! Don't you remember me". I smirked at first and looked back because you usually don't find people running around and calling each other by unknown names in the university compound, it breaks the social balance of the place!

I turned around and it was her. Now, with a bag and a suitcase in her hand. Running as fast as she could, with a hat and her hair covering her face. The black dress reflected brightly as the sun shone on her. I thought she would never remember me. As she came towards me, walking in an unknown sequence as if the sunflowers were making way for her and nearly every step she took, was so light and perfect that the very Earth started to bloom. It was as if dad was telling me another fairy tale from heaven and this time, I was encountering a fairy for real.

She smiled and laughed again, and I was staring at her, again. Before she looked at me, keeping her suitcase down and her hat aside, I slowly brushed her fringes aside and those two words again popped out from my mouth. She laughed at first but then mentioned that she was new to this place and that she was already facing problems regarding renting an apartment. She wanted me to find her a place to live since she hardly knew anyone there. I smiled and suggested her to stay at the teacher's dorm for the time being. It was amazing. Life was different for me. We talked and met on coffee in the evening, morning and sometimes even managed to take the three meals together. After 3 weeks, I found a place. It stood right opposite to that of mine. But, it was expensive. Since the landlord of the area happened to be a close friend of mine, I arranged a deal that said that I would bear half of the rent while she would do the same. But, my payment would directly go to him and she wouldn't have any clue about it.