Those Five Days

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Five Days

For me this was life. This. Right here, right now. Standing at the very edge, feeling the breeze on my face and relishing the fact that I'm alive. This is the one truth the sky adorned with countless stars has taught me- there are too many people lost in history to risk everything for a future that might not ever come.

"Shakshi Di! What are you doing there?" Another of my friend's younger brother shouts from below. I can see his upturned face from the space between my feet which are balanced on the black iron railing.

Had this been a scene from my favorite dance shows, I would have done a back flip in the air and jumped back on the stable surface of the terrace floor. But no matter how much of a self-proclaimed clown I am, I'm not an idiot so I jump off the railing --backward, of course.

"And time for the final finish," I say to my invisible audience and start running. Across the terrace and down the staircase with its sharp turns.

It takes me fifteen minutes to reach my house that is about two hundred meters away. Why, you ask?

I was running too fast and ended up taking a ten-minute break midway. I know, I'm awesome.

"Shut up, just SHUT UP!" The shouting wasn't the first indication that nothing was alright today. Neither was the scene of my seventeen-year-old house in mess, with the dining table balancing precariously against the wall and pieces of crockery and glass sparkling dangerously on the floor.

The first indication was Cuckoo. Unconscious on the floor.

A sense of foreboding made my hands shake as I made my way to my childhood companion. As soon as I was close enough, my knees went weak. I didn't fall but I might as well have. Subconsciously, I was listening to my parents' voices coming from the bedroom.

"I don't know how you could do this to her, Ravi. She's your daughter. I could have forgiven you for what you did to us but she doesn't deserve any of this."

The same dramatic expressions used with the same clichéd words.

The door slamming behind me took care of it, shutting off the argument I've been hearing four more than four years.

Cuckoo was in my arms, his white fur caked with blood but with a heart still beating inside it. Barely.

"Shakshi, don't be stupid. You can't stay in here for five days. Cuckoo will be alright. We'll come to meet him every day." My mother's voice went on unheeded as my father stood silently by the waiting room entrance. For fifteen minutes I had kept myself calm. That was enough for one day. I stood up and went to the man deserving of any harsh word I chose to give.

"Half an hour dad. Thirty minutes. Eighteen hundred seconds. If I had been lying there, would you have even cared?"

I didn't want to compare Cuckoo's life to mine. But humans have a strange tendency to consider other life forms as inferior to them. I just hoped to drive the point across.

"I need a break from the two of you. I want to come out unharmed from this stupid war you two have created. Pack your bags; you're going on a vacation. Anywhere would do, just not around me."

Yes, I didn't have it planned. Yes I, as a seventeen-year-old, couldn't order my parents around. And yes, if they didn't agree- I'll go through the phase of life inevitable in these circumstances, teenage rebellion. And swear to hell, I'd make it the worst one in the history of teenage angst.