My Dark Scientist

03 | Down the memory and Up the future Lanes

        "I thought heaven can't help me now, Nothing lasts forever, this is gonna take me down He's so tall And handsome as hell He's so bad but he does it so well....And his voice is a familiar sound, nothing lasts forever but this is getting good now "
                                              ~ Wildest Dreams (Taylor Swift)

ELLORA

I lost my limbs.

Yes. That is the first thought that came in my mind when I saw my bike completely broke, just a few yards from me, as I stood helpless in the middle of the road.

It is as if I lost a part of my heart.

A couple of years back, as a child and as a teen, I was a very..indoor kind of girl. Introvert as I've ever been, an awkward teen, insecure about pretty much everything.

Those were the days when Ethan was but just a kid. I did not have any friends, not that I have now. My point is, I did not have any one to confide in. And being the utterly broken teen that I was, I can put my everything on a bet and say that teens does need someone to confide in to. Anyone. Parents, friends, cousins, siblings, boy/girl friends...just anyone with whom they can share about anything without the fear of being judged and abondoned.

Before anyone starts to think that I confided in my bike as a teen, let me be clear, its not. All these tears that I am shedding right now, standing in the middle of the road, like a mad woman, is because I have just lost the last thing, the last memory, I had of the person who gave me this bike.

I don't think anyone will ever understand what this bike meant to me.

And now seeing it all broken up into several pieces in the dark and dull corner of a sidewalk, just like a piece of junk, an image of this same bike, but brand new, in all its glory standing on the porch of my house flashed in my memory.

And with it came back the memory of Gramps's toothless grin, as he sat on his wheelchair, watching the twelve year old me jumping and squealing in delight at the sight of this same bicycle.

I remember every day of that one month whithin which I had learned to ride it. Because Gramps would be there in the field every single day and watch me learn riding it. He was there to laugh his toothless grins, all the times I had fallen down. He was there to accompany me back home - he in his wheelcheer and me beside him rolling the  bicyle beside us, talking about anything and everything, inside a little bubble that we created around us, making loads of beautiful memories.

He even postponed some of his routine checkups, just to come with me to the fields and watch me learn to ride the bike that he had gifted to me on my twelfth birthday. And that was one of the times when I realised that I was as important to him as he was to me.

He is the only person who had made me feel important in my entire life of nineteen years.

He was the person to whom I would confide in my early teens.

And then one day, when life was harder than ever, when I was in the middle of figuring myself out, figuring my life out, figuring the whole point of my existence, when I needed him the most, he left.

He just left. Because his heart was too weak to take in the news of his son's cancer. 

The bike was the only thing that I had of him, apart from the picture that is on the wall of the living room. Gramps had brought the shy girl outdoors and out in the world. Gramps has taught me that life isn't going to come and knock at my door. I have to go and live it. And hence the bike. It was a sort of weapon I guess. Without him, I don't think it would have ever been possible for me to gain the courage to study science.