..clouds of past...

Today I am missing the sky. It has been months since I have seen it. Is it still blue and full of drifting clouds? It is completely out of the equation for me to venture out. For that ... a battery of hospital staff and some from my family would have to flex their muscles and would be required to be on a constant vigil. Anyway! I don't want them to rack up their brains for something that doesn't excite them anymore. When I was a child, I often thought about how gargantuan the universe was. I believed that every ray of light, that issued from these luminous and far-away celestial bodies, was designed to light up the sky so that children could look up and wonder in delight. No, my mother never told me that dead people ended up as stars. Somehow, the various shapes the constellations assumed always fed me with joy and surprise. I even tried measuring the huge expanse of the sky by merely spreading my fingers thereby spanning the whole view in it, or trying to eclipse the sun with my palms and making it disappear for a while with my wink. I had pretty quaint notions about the sun. Darkness always intrigued me. I believed that the clouds always hid the sun from our sights so that people could sleep at ease. I always wondered where my paper boats went once they were set sailing in the overflowing drains. Did they wither to tiny bits being constantly in battle with the strong currents or went ahead to join a bigger brook?

In fact , my life has been a quest to get a hang of that vastness. Once I scribbled my name on a 10 rupee note and set it on the carousel by buying some grocery. I have always hoped that it would come back to me. It never did. That led me to think that the world was real big. Correct conclusion. A very simple hypothesis testing which was employed by a child who never really welcomed the correction of his firmly affixed silly notions that the school later brought to his notice and subsequently forced him to restructure his beliefs. But then you have to grow, much against your wishes.

Pikku is trying to murder a yawn that is so restless to manifest itself. I have to cheer him up. There you go! Pikku corrects his posture, lets out a sound from his knuckles. He lives on dreams. He feeds on hope. He breathes peace. And so I have to jazz him up.

My early schooling took place in a silent, obscure town in India. We had beautiful uniforms. Sapphire pants, white shirts, grey ties. I am sure that back then even our silhouettes would have looked colorful. Everyday a rickshaw-wallah would religiously appear in wee hours of the morning and take me along with other children to the school. Children of my ilk would anxiously wait for the class to end and would jostle to get out. We headed straight to the field and played under the relentless sun. I don't remember their faces. I just remember the traits of our creed. Unadulterated and serene childhood friends of mine. I remember this particular girl (hold your breath! Yes! even her name to a t!) who was peculiar in the way she treated me. I don't remember being specially gifted ever. Not easy on the eye, a bit nerdy and definitely I had this air of unapproachibility going round me in eternal circles. She sat by my side in the class. Not willingly but was made to , thanks to a special permutation my class teacher devised to seperate the inseperable friends from each other. Just to spoil the party for merry-makers of the luncheon. The boisterous ones were paired with coy ones. Silence and noise annihilate each other. Perhaps.

She was magnanimous. Would lend me her pencils because I invariably left my case at home. I was neat in studies but my notes were terrible. She lent her copy and made sure that I never got my share of rebukes , which I so very well deserved. I don't remember if she was beautiful. With age you get those eyes that dissect beauty and create disparities that ruin our world. But whosoever she was, no matter how she looks now, I really pine for her. I always feel she never did let me do my bit for her. May be she was a tad too gracious for her age. Lying here, now, I really want to see her. I want that last bit of service from her. I really do.

Love is like that boat I set free in the pool of yesteryear. Forgotten, desolate, yet moving on against the tide of woes and despair. Love is like that sapling that survives the heat of Indian summers all on its own , even if you don't water it , to cool you in its shade. Love is a devil that hypnotises you to embrace even your estranged friends. It buoys you to a clear, blue sky above those dense clouds so that you know that darkness is just a phase. The envelop is all that is hiding your sun from you. Life is that breeze in which the smell of a thousand flowers waft leaving behind the pain of the seemingly tortuos thorns. Love is much like death. It expects you to keep savoring it long after it has been ditched to some inaccessible recess of your brain.

All of you who think that you have moved on after forgetting someone ... remember that there are somethings in this world that never cease to exist, no matter how hard we pretend to have forgetten them. Love is one such thing.