GULMOHAR IN THE TREE

Chapter -2

Time passes in a wink, like a speedy gush of wind, tracing lands with dried leaves........

It is spring now in April, and Ved is to step in college in few months after the results come .
There is probably nothing for him to do these days , than to prepare for B.sc entrance exams in various Universities.
It seems to him that the time has stopped, when he spends hours sitting in his balcony lax and wordless  and studying ,even a leaf or a twig not making a sound As the days pass ,the trees are adorned again with leaves and flowers ,the gulmohar ones too.

One day ...sometime in the April ending Ved ,wandering on his terrace and gazing around, fixes his eyes on the gulmohar trees that are fully bloomed by now in green, red ,yellow flame and even slight pink, listening continuous bells of distant temples, near ghats or in a clumsy street. Through their leaves ,the Sun peeps as his perception is proved wrong ,that the gulmohar trees won't bloom the following year ,that they would stand like bald scalps .They are blooming in every part ,with the wind ,Sun and water .
To his satisfaction he has been proved wrong . He sips his coffee and wanders leisurely again scratching the frizzy growing hair on his legs with his toes .
The next moment, standing beside the terrace boundary he sees a flower being plucked by the wind gently and carried to his lawn ,then standing still , he goes over it's features as a warm flush passes over him and a memory lands again in his living soul ,like a dawn in the evening, a face starts appearing familiar to him , of a girl -Dia.
At first in an absent state, Ved is carried to that another world ,in tea gardens of darjeeling and in 3-star hotel halls and the toy trains ;but as a bird chirps sitting on the boundary ,he in back to ponder it ,to wonder over Dia's presence and to question even his own corner stacked memory about her..............like an old flipping album, pulled out from a cupboard now meant to be sold off.
"Who she was?" "Why was she bothering him?" "How is her face so well etched in some corner of him?" "Why was her smell so familiar? ".......
....................
They remain mere questions for now, raging and voicing like shivering sounds of dead spirits.

A smiling face, straight black brown hair falling over shoulders, damp, deep black eyes gazing unbearably from tender white complexion in mist and thick greenery, two closed pink lips  forming a small curve if smile that it so unidentical, a whiff of  fragrance crossing his nostrils then fading away, crossing his unconsciousness then fading away, his own palm held in long slim fingers, someone taking him to the hills , tea gardens,  then gurgling of two in early teens, laughing ......it begins to hit him like cold piercings on fingers and toes that start turning numb, then rising up to his bare knees below his shorts; then he begins to sweat.
Ved gives a sudden sigh stunned by chirping of a bird, wipes his forehead and breathes restlessly. He does not feels good to stand that way alone near boundary, his right hand resting on the railing, the other wiping his face. He settles down cross-legged, on the terrace floor still slight hot with the Sun, able to hear his fast breathes.
Ved looks around, the surrounding stinking with a strangeness, making him terrified; fearsome he then flees to his room. He shuts the door behind, but it still bothers him, then shuts the three windows, even more terrified he switches the lights off and collapses in his bed, his breathe  fastening with each measure of him, and yet he takes another measure and closes his eyes, sweating biting his lips. Her laughter again rings in his ears -Dia's laughter.
Then without a notice, sleep gets over him and he gets in because he doesn't wants to stay awake to be reminded of what he knows, sleep he feels is a deep escape, something one can actually feel and yet can't recognise and regeneration it like deep ridden memories that lay in one's consciousness.
                          
"Ved!" "Ved!" Are you still sleeping, get up. It's almost 5:30, twilight. Get up at once and open all the windows." His mother frowns, knocking on the door her voice fading as she goes downstairs with a 'Puja' platter in her hands, like other women who walk out same way after evening worship in their houses for Ganga Aarti, when hundreds of oil lamps lit up gleaming the holy water of the river.  Her voice though fades is left in his ears. He wakes up after some minutes, pushing the cotton blanket aside, his eyes straining and itching, his cheeks feeling swollen after nap. The holler of playing kids and teens still ringing all around.
He just not feels good, though it all has vanished for a while. After straightening up his room and switching the lights on, he opens the downloaded play list in his phone, plugs in earphones and plays 'Senorita.' For a moment it's all silent, until sharp sweet voice of Camila Cabello turns in his ears, his head shaking on every single beat, his mind matching the lyrics and the music that is settled in him already. Then with the voice of Shawn Mendes he begins to sing slowly, almost hissing, sitting on floor beside his bed, his arms folded. As the song ends, it gives him goosebumps and tears. Something he can't identify reason for. Something that happens every time he listens favourite of his songs.

He follows it with~ Havana, Paris(Chainsmokers ), All we know and endless~, as he always did to put off his afternap gloominess. As he puts the earphones off, the still silence of house fills his ears, he strokes his temples then gets up, arranging his room, opening windows, arranging his study table (which he uses only for keeping his pile of books), cleaning the clutter off his bed; then sits down with his diary on his bed, resting it on one of his knees held up. It has a sweet warm  fragrance of cherry sparkle he used to doodle the first page which is now half faded, as it has passed four  years in his room, with some 400 thick handmade pages, he hardly wrote on ; a souvenir from his 13th birthday, a gift. Ved then places a pillow on his lap cross- legged, putting the diary above it open on one of the starting pages then begins to write-

      "My dear diary,
         I know  I have never ever written to you in such a long while but now I do feel so. I feel things enter in our lives only when we need them, though they are already lying around. There will be a long way if I sit to tell all my till the present story, but it was all I and others have known, and retelling it to you is not the thing I wanna do, and that creates a difference here, things and stories that will stay between you'd me and hardly any one or no one else may be. My life has always been filled people and friends,  but it's not so now, it's very different. I feel as if something was waiting for me and it's all about me. I no more feel people will understand what I'll tell them my feelings, so I need you. Meet you then next time. ♡"

By the time, Sun is already sinking like a red drop of paint blotting a soaked sheet, edging the far horizon behind trees and houses of Sanjay Nagar Colony, like nerves spreading in a skin.