Picking up a day from past

The temperature has only risen this week. Even falling asleep is difficult in the climate where the sky is breathing hot air. In the crowed concrete jungle of Kathmandu, cool breeze is a very rare commodity. That makes me sit under the clear sky in the night on the terrace of my house. Just a day before yesterday, I was relishing on the cool breeze in the night, the sky appealed me, it just lifted my chin to gaze it. Millions and millions of star hung in its expanse shawl. During my childhood, I used to read in science books and poems about the twinkling stars, I used to look at them but I never saw them twinkle because twinkling to me was going on and off the way the colorful lights do during Diwali. Till date I associate the term “twinkle” with lights going on and off. Sky specially the sky at Night has always mesmerized me; I get entangled in the fantasies, laden with so many questions. When loneliness and evening meet they make me nostalgic, so many men are reminded of pain and agony when they look into their past and luckily for me past has been wonderful, probably wonderful that present and they are wonderful because its past.

Anyways, that night under the elderly looking sky decorated with twinkling stars, I revisited my school life in my thoughts. The breeze became cooler as if it was blowing for those days. I remembered rising up early, finishing home assignments and rushing to school, to be part of a class where faces twinkled more than the stars. I cannot extract the meaning of the hubbub but I find music in it, music with no words but with soul. My friends are chatting, running, laughing and even crying. There are so many of those students who I still meet as job-holders, mothers, husband and wives, the impression of time is so clearly visible in them. Some of them are taller, some are chubbier, some have become serious, the faces have altered but the traits shaped by the childhood are somewhere there reminding we have known each other for a long time, very long time. Few have same cunning smile, some faces shine the same way when they laugh, some hands still move impatiently as they talk and some are still children though they have their own children. I sometime feel that childhood has not vanished, it hasn’t lost but its suppressed. When its friends we forget the age, when we meet after long time we remember good old days together reminding one another moments and events that have been rusted by the mighty time. Again matured people talk silly, laugh on silliest of comments, make fun of each other trying to make maximum out of it because when we disperse a different life awaits us. The shade of past vanishes in the dazzles of present. Back at home we have a different role to play because past is past, unrecoverable but sweet, distant yet very close, dream but that was a reality. It seems as if we are just the characters of a novel who sometime come out of the books, the books that only lie in the shelf. We come out, tug the layer of dust, hold each others hand, dance and sing, laugh and cry.

Change becomes something so visible and powerful. The laziest of us are now most active bankers, the flowing and dirty noses are dry and clean, the eyes have become frail and they need the support of glasses, beauties have turned into ugliness, ugliness are now beauties, bullies are empathetic, jokers are serious, mighty have become powerless, dummies have become scholar. Its not the change that is so significant it is what has changed that is so significant and loud.

I am so much captivated by past, by nostalgia because today few of us from our schools almost 10 years back are gathering an hour later. I am pleased, I am excited, I am so touched. I am excited to meet them, to seek my friends, classmates among the grown ups who I will be meeting a while later.

Expression

The black clouds didn’t let the earth see its beloved Sun specially after it rained all the night. The city is littered and muddy, there are puddles everywhere thanks to the worn out roads where stones and the tars have come out of their places and the roads look like a toothless old man. It feels pity to walk on these road but businesses cannot be stopped for roads. In the evening the beam of light that entered into the go-down like passage of our department, I felt really nice. The roads must have felt better as well as with the Sun peeping through the curtains of heavy clouds it must have given the roads a hope to get dried. But then its nature, why would nature listen to the woes of dirty roads and miseries of people who forgot umbrellas at home, the black clouds were back again. Today we witnessed Sun for not more than fifteen minutes. When it rains occasionally and when it’s the first rain of the season, it’s a different feeling, the smell of the soil, the leaves that dance taking a shower everything part of the rapturous nature. When it rains longer, when the mood is already somber and one has to walk in the littered city now clad in mud the chances of feeling happy is very little specially when one is not pleased with the day, with oneself. The drizzle had already started and drops of water on my glasses made things look blur. In the road everyone hurried to home, few with umbrellas and few without umbrella. In the sleek cars the richs and the important watched we poor souls as we jumped and tip-toed avoiding the puddle which were bigger pools at places.

I was already missing a warm cup of tea as I hurried home under an umbrella whose wires have come out and desperately looking for some repair. I remember their poor condition only when I have to use them and I am using the same umbrella broken at places, may be I won’t replace it until it sags. Either the whole lot of workers had returned home lot earlier than me or I was late I had no problem finding the public tempo. Two elderly people sat facing each other and were talking their things which didn’t interest me. May be after being in a safer place I was busy observing the people trapped in rain, the walking umbrellas as the carriers were hidden under these umbrellas, kids clad in their rain coat. I saw one of the old men laughing. He had lost his front teeth, the gap made him look pretty specially in the grey hair which remained only in their sides. My thoughts were caught in ‘will I live till my teeth fall’. I got interested in their activities, they were talking about a book whose name I don’t remember. They talked how they pass time, about their children, none of them talked about their wives may be they were widower. It must be very difficult to live lonely at that age. As I was pondering about these things, the old man who sat by my side told the other that one of their friends died a month ago. The expression on the face of another old man changed without transition. It was filled more with fear and hopelessness rather than with pity. He must have thought they are all standing in the same queue just waiting to be picked up by death. I wonder if they still had dreams or if dreams had become meaningless at their age. I wondered I would they look back into their lives, what would they think seeing the babies they had carried on their arms now carrying their own babies. Once we know the end there is just meaninglessness around. I don’t know if the old man was thinking people will talking about his death just as similar as they were talking about the death of their friend. Their generation was just dying out, to let others to fill their place. In the long run no one means anything to the world. How do they think when they see young people living the days they once lived. Their frail heart must have been the graveyard of so many wishes, so many ambitions. What would they plan for the next day? In my childhood specially when I was bed-ridden after I broke my leg and when nobody used to be around, I used to think what if I lost my parents and the thoughts would be just expanded and I would cry. How would they feel when they know now the countdown has begun. One often ask a retiring employee how was his/her experience in the job, I wonder what would they reply if one asked them about the experience of their life. What would they think when they hold their grandchildren in their arms? What would they think when they see an old lady in the woman they married, the woman they lived with. Would it trouble them that they might see their beloved partner bading them goodbye for ever. I had become serious, the old men must have talked about so many things when I come out with my questions. The aura of the old man had changed and it had clear tints of indifference when I departed. I am walking the same road, somebody might undergo through similar thoughts when they will see me then.

 

Haphazard

The morning is torrid and I am already feeling lazy thinking how hot and scorching the day is going to be. The color coat in a newly painted house that I can see from my verandah is irritatingly shiny. The sky is clear but not soothing. Interestingly I am excited about going to office today which is a very rare case. I took a day off yesterday as I had an exam, I took it without any need just to help my classmates. After so many mornings of a queue of bikes before my house, the passage to my home looks rather lonely today. My mother told the other day I have been inducted into the hall of fame of VIPs, her tone sarcastic and her aura mocking me. I must say I have been busy lately. I have always been busy when I have had exams. The other day I was helping a classmate solve a problem in my room and lecturing another on the cell and there was a call waiting in the landline. Sarita found this rather funny and incomprehensible. Mummy is used to it and she thinks it is futile on my part, but may be I feel good. I feel good when I look important, feel important but I hate this feeling. Everyone likes praises but I think my likings are little too much and that’s why I hate it.

Two laborers are working in our small garden, they are digging a tunnel for passage of water. After watching them work and the work they did, I was thinking I could have done that so that was waste of money. I felt nice to have this feeling though I know it only looks easy but is a tough task in reality. There are books and papers spread in my room, so many papers of assignments and projects belong to those who had been here for study yesterday and days before. Many books are waiting to be read in my shelves and I don’t think I will consider their plea very soon. I will however finish books that I have borrowed from others. That is a promise to those books!!!!!

I am feeling bored as I am writing this, may be it is because I am writing after such a long time. I was busy helping Sarita do her assignments and she always has so many stories of her friends and schools to tell me. The reserves of her stories never empties. Today she was telling me about one of her classmates whose parents had a tough time making the two ends meet. She said, they were made to evacuate their rented rooms after being able to pay rents for months. The teachers have asked the other students to help them with things they have in extra like books and copies. I appreciated the teacher. Sarita would have had same fate were she left at her home in Dhading. She would not have made it to school as her parents are poor and she would have to take care of her younger siblings. It makes me feel a little better because I feel guilty for having a child work as maid. She goes to school and she is happy most of the time, that should console me, I suppose.

The other story she told me was of another of her friends who found a pouch of ribbons red and blue on the road which he showed to the teacher. The teacher jokingly told her since he has so many ribbons he should tie them in his hair as well, the other day the boy came to school with ribbon tied in his hair. Sarita says he is so dumb and passive that he actually thought the teacher really wanted him to see in ribbon. 

Though there are books and papers around me I am least interested in them. May be it’s the dazzling heat, I should start studying.