- Aᴠᴏɪᴅ ᴛʏᴘᴏ ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀᴀᴍᴍᴀᴛɪᴄᴀʟ ᴇʀʀᴏʀs -
The sheer white curtains danced in sync to the wind swaying in through the windows, as I walked into the room. The wind was cool, and filled with the essence of petrichor, but somehow it failed to give the comfort it used to give, and it failed to be the one that would soothe the soul. I knew the reason. It was him. He left me behind, leaving me incapacitated to feel things the same way I did with him, in his absence. I used to love the way the wind would delicately caress my skin and would playfully mess around with my hair, tousling it all over my face, but it wasn't the same anymore, and I brush my hands over my face moving the strands aside, and tuck my hair behind the ears, hurrying in, as the wind blew harsher, scattering the documents and some old, gleeful memories captured in photographs, all over the room. I sighed in exasperation and leaned over, picking them up, and set them back in their place. He is careless about keeping things in order, just the way the photographs and several other things lay scattered over the bed right now, and as I go through those things, my eyes fell over a photograph of his, lying upon the bed and a smile crept up my lips, unknowingly. I took it carefully into my hands, not wanting to stain it with my dust-laden hands. The dust is stuck on my hands like it doesn't want to leave. It has been there for long now, and for months, maybe? I lost count of the time, somehow. I would sometimes feel like my camaraderie with the time broke apart, or maybe I felt this way because he was no more with me. I fell in a trance, as I tried to remember the time, but the wind gusting in chaotically once again, caused a banging noise, as it struck through the door, forcing it to strike against the wall, and and it startled me out of my reverie, and once again, my eyes fell over him, and I found myself adoring his boyish grin in the photograph. This memory was from our secret voyage into the depths of north-eastern India, that no one from our family knew about. According to them, it was a college excursion that we went on, with the whole batch, while in reality, it was just the two of us, spending the time alone, exploring the world, exploring our love. Long since we got married, our parents still do not know the most of our affair. It was our little, secret, dear adventure. We were still young, wild, reckless, totally in love, and in the lush-green phase of dating. And as I continued gazing at the photograph, I couldn't help, but laugh, thinking of the moment when I clicked it, and as I continued to, another strong, mischievous stroke of wind blew it out of my hands, snatching the laughter from me, as my eyes rose in panic, and I trailed behind, to get hold of something which was much, much more than just a mere photograph. I picked up the picture and sat over the bed, and taking my diary which lay beside me, I carefully placed the photograph somewhere between those thick, white pages, keeping it unharmed, and turning the pages behind, I continued writing what remained incomplete, last time. I wish he could read it, just the way he used to, stealthily, sometimes, and would make fun of me, endlessly, for the kind of things I had written.
"... He died. He left me behind. I could no more see him give about the grin at his silliest and the room echoed his laughter no more. He was dead. Absolutely lifeless he was, but was not a diffused chill in the air, or a shimmer of mist, or the one lurking in the dark, the way they would often theorise dead people. He had simply ceased to exist in the world that I was in. He had simply stopped living the life he was bestowed with, the same way the saints and monks renunciate the worldly things for a purpose much beyond and profound than the concept of life, but him being inexistent, was very much purposeless and something not very sane.
He was a child trapped in the body of an adult. Slightest of the achievements would make him happy, and littlest of the scars would bring out his tears. He was an empath, and would dissolve in people's lives unambiguously, like the meandering air. He was a hurricane of smiles and laughter. But nothing remained the same, for he had become a ghost, fond of an eerie silence, and it was this silence that had insinuated itself into his existence in such a way, that it made him almost inexistent, dead. It aches as I think of him. Who would've thought that an innocent wish of mine would snatch him away from me, forever? That a ghost, he would become?"
