The smoky breeze brushed past Indira’s thin pale cheeks disturbing her short brown curls. The sky slowly changed from blue to shades of red over the city life of Kolkata. The grand old clock downstairs chimed reminding everyone of the duties to be completed. Indira closed her books, and letting a deep sigh, she got up to meet her grandmother.
Climbing down the stairs, she could hear the strains and restrains of an old Bengali song growing louder and louder and the buzzing of the city died off. The smell of tea mingled with the colonial air of the house. Grandmother, seeing her , dropped the knitting work and smiled graciously. Indira struggled to smile even though she loved her grandmother dearly. A smile is something which comes from happy innocent hearts. Smile vanished from her life an year before. As sun went down, both of them knitted away ; the silence building up between them. Both pretended to be listening to the radio but their thoughts wandered through the dry deserts of bitter memories………. Some things you never want to bring back…………….
Indira was so happy when she knew that her mother was the first women to be employed from her town. But she never ever imagined how much she would be missing her. When her mother ignored her immersed in blue prints and sketches, for the first time she felt the bitterness of loneliness. Indira confined to her room quenching her thirst immersing in books.
But the real pang came when she started to see her parents barking at each other. She thought that it would end within weeks. Yes, it did end within a week but it ended in the court . The young mother and the business-minded father walked away to the opposite directions throwing their daughter into the care of grandmother.
With her smile her reason, essence and dreams vanished. She lived just because she had to and she talked just to prove that she lived. Life seemed so meaningless…….. like a parched land , it waited for a single drop to cool the burning heart.
The music flowed endlessly in the room piercing the coldness of November nights. Indira suddenly switched of radio and looked passionately into the eyes of the grand old lady. “Grandma …….will you please sing me a lullaby?”. Four eyes overflowed like rain after the summer spell. Indira was lost in the embrace of her grandmother and a bittersweet strain of a lullaby filled the whole room as a relic of sweet things lost in a journey. Slowly as Indira’s eyes closed her lips curled into a radiant smile …….. just as the sun which breaks out after a storm…….just as a rose blooming from a bud.................
