GUILT

I heard his footsteps before I saw him down the empty road. The stars were in the sky and a half moon shined. On the footpath, I had already spread out the rug. I had also scolded my wife again for the torn pillow that she hadn’t stitched during the day. She was busy, she said, because there were more rags to pick than usual. She wasn’t sleeping on any pillow, she complained. I ignored. The night had gone quiet since, before his footsteps were heard.

He was wearing leather shoes and nothing else. In the moonlight, the sweat on his body shined silver as he ran on the middle of the road towards me. Every two steps he ran, he turned back to see if he was followed. Was there anyone else behind him? I could not see, nor hear. The man ran past me as if I was a ghost.

The rhythm of his shoes hitting the road echoed through the night.

Tap – top – tap – top – tap …

“Wait”, I screamed.

He stopped. Tap and a top and a delayed tap as he turned to look at me.

His body belonged to a rich man, like those who go about in cars but look like gods. Even between his legs, he looked strong. I heard shuffling behind me and my wife stood next to me. When she saw him, she let out a gasp. Gently, she slipped her arm around mine.

He walked towards me. With every step he took, my wife’s hand clutched me harder. Was she scared or excited by the man? I wanted to see where she was looking, but the man had almost reached me. His hot breath misted in the cold air. His eyes looked dark.

“Why are you running?” I asked.

“I killed a man”, he said. His voice was hollow as if it was he who was dead.

I looked down the road. There wasn’t anyone following him.

“Whom are you running from?” I asked.

My wife was breathing hard. Her grip was so tight that my left hand below the elbow had gone numb.

“I am running from the man I killed”, he said.

My wife gasped. “Can you see anyone else?” I snapped at her. She shook her head no.

I turned back to the man. “Then, run”, I told him. “Because the one you are running from will never stop.”

He nodded, looked at my wife and I could feel her squeezing the juice out of my hand.

I looked as the man ran away, his buttocks bouncing to the rhythm of his shoes. Even after he had rounded the corner I could hear his steps.

Tap – top – tap – top – tap …

I didn’t see or hear anyone following him, but how could I? Guilt doesn’t wear leather shoes.

As his steps faded, I went back to my rug and spread myself. My wife was breathing softly beside me. The night grew silent again. My hand was still numb.

“How long do you think he will run?” I asked my wife.

But, she was already asleep.

THE DAY AFTER

The world looked the same. The vehicles sped by and the people walked about. Some laughed and others had blank faces. I got the usual smiles and stares. Two vendors screamed out the prices of vegetables and a dog lifted his leg and pissed at a pole. The sun was bright but the air was winter-cool. When I looked down, the red skirt I was wearing and the black flip-flops were old too. The world around me had not changed at all.

I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear and walked on. My eyes had swollen because I was up crying all night, but I didn’t try to hide them. I got a look of sympathy from the women and the men weren’t looking at my eyes. In the distance, I saw the priest walking towards me, his head hanging low.

“Where are you going, Father?” I asked him when he was near.

He looked up with a solemn expression. “Going to visit the very sick, dear” he said.

I smiled my first smile in two days. “The very sick are going to die, Father”

His mouth hung open and he shook his head in disgust.

I looked at him as he walked away, till he was as little as my finger in the distance. And then I ran behind him like a mad girl, shoving people from my path. Some looked up and moved away and some were too busy on their phones and were pushed. I passed the priest and didn’t stop to greet him again and I ran like I was possessed by the dead. I opened the gate and I ran up the stairs. Level 1, level 2, level 3, and I was knocking on the door and ringing the bell and knocking on the door again. When I heard the door click, I pushed it open and my mother staggered backwards but I didn’t stop till I reached my room.

And there they were, sitting on my writing table. The room was filled with the smell of dying flowers. I sat on my bed and looked at them. Red roses and lilies which were starting to brown, all tied together. They had smelled so wonderful before the fight, before his voices were so loud that I had cried, before he had slammed the door and walked off. The world had changed after all.

I knew my mother was behind me, looking at me. I was sweating from the run and my heart was drumming in my chest. I could hear the ticks and tocks of the clock on the wall, the honks of the vehicle outside and some stray voices that had no meaning.

All I was waiting for is the day after, when he would ring the bell and knock the door and ring the bell again. He would push open the door and run to me with apologies on his lips. He would hug me and kiss me and give me a bunch of fresh flowers to replace the old.

The very sick will be dead by then and someone’s world will have changed.

But for me, my world would be back again.

TRAIL OF FRAGRANCE

It was not a day for him to fall in love. It felt odd somehow, with the sun burning and the flowers gone dry. The sky was blue, he told me later as if he expected it to be something else.

I smiled. “And then?” I asked.

He sat upright and continued. His eyes were bright as if lit up by the fire in his heart. I could see his hands were trembling and his foot tapping the ground.

“Are you anxious?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No”, he said.

” What is it then?” I asked.

He looked around sharply.

“I don’t feel like me anymore”, he said. He stood up to somehow emphasise his statement. I looked at him and he seemed the same to me. A thirteen year old body, bespectacled eyes and one leg. I let my eyes linger on the stump of his shorts from which no leg came out.

” What did she say?” I asked.

“She doesn’t know. I am not sure if I want her to know.”

“But why?” I asked.

He sat down again. “Because I want to be in love”, he smiled. “I feel like I’ve got both my legs.”

MADMAN

On a busy Monday morning, the office going crowd stopped dead and watched a man running along the street, as naked as the day he was born.

An old lady sighed loudly. “I knew the world was coming to this”, she said.

I was standing next to her, leaning on my walking stick which supported my trembling knees.

I shrugged. “Seems like clothes are out of fashion these days”, I said.

As much as I tried to look elsewhere, I was tempted to see the pair of healthy buttocks bouncing as he ran. I noticed the old lady was watching them too and, in a voice that dripped of past memories, she said, “My husband had buttocks that looked like those.”

We kept looking in his direction, even after the man had disappeared around the corner, lost in our own chain of thoughts.

That afternoon during lunch, I told my wife about the latest madman in town. She listened intently till I finished and then brushed it off saying, “He must have been caught sleeping with another’s wife.”

That generalization made me discuss with her the various scenarios that must have happened. We missed our siesta and then still discussed over the evening tea.

When we went to bed that night, she slid closer to me and placed her hand on my chest. “I just realized”, she said, “that this is the longest we have spoken to each other for ages.”

I met the old lady on the street the next day and greeted her. She had a smile on her face, that of a sixteen year old who had just fallen in love.

“For the first time since my husband died, I had a great sleep last night”, she explained, “and I’m not even going to tell you about the dream I had”, she winked.

I laughed. Then we stood under the sun, waiting for the madman to come rushing out and add some more flavor to our lives.

SWEEPER’S LOVE

In the final days of his life, the sweeper sat on the steps of our building and cried. It was a life filled with regrets, he said to me one day. Under the golden evening sun, he painted a sad picture of his life and while I sipped on my coffee, he gave me a free piece of advice.

“A man is a bull before he falls in love”, he said. “After that, he only brays.”

Surprised by these words, I inquired about the women he had loved and he, with a shrug of his shoulder, dismissed my question.

Next day, when I saw him crying again, I wrapped my hand over his shoulder and said, “Do not cry in these days of remembrance. It is always good to enter the heaven with a smile.”

He made me sit on the steps and going into the store room, came out with his broom that had broken into two.

We sat looking at the dead broom for a minute in silence and then he looked at me and said, “She was with me for forty two years.”

“How did she break?” I asked him.

He looked at me as if I had asked the silliest question. He shook his head at my foolishness and said, “With old age your bones become weak.”

His broom had never touched the ground for forty two years. The dirt remained where it was and when people had complained that he didn’t do the job well, he accepted the blame. He was fired from jobs and was abused by people but he went to the store and with one hug from his broom, forgot all the worries.

“I never thought she would break”, he said, wiping his tears.

And then he stood up, picked up the virgin part of the broom and walked into the garden. He then located a plain patch of ground and swept away the leaves. Laying on the ground and staring at the sky, he said to me, “Bury me here when I am dead. And bury my beloved broom too.”

He closed his eyes and waited for death to take him, which it did, three years and seventeen days later.

FOREVER

He watched her from distance as she walked with a rose in her hand. She walked with elegance, her stride purposeful and her eyes watching nothing in particular. Her gown had beautiful red flowers printed on it and he was sure she smelled so wonderful too. She looked like she would easily fit into the wedding gown that she had worn forty years back.

People offered their sympathies to her and she smiled kindly in return. She didn’t tell them how she missed his hand holding hers, steadying himself more than her. They wouldn’t understand, she thought, and then they would make fake sounds of sympathy. The sun was up now and she began to sweat.

He saw the sweat forming on her forehead and rushed towards her. She only felt the air that blew gently over her face. She closed her eyes and let it cool her.

He blew over her again and again. He could see that she missed him terribly. He knew that she hadn’t slept at night and didn’t enjoy her food.

She reached the place where his body was buried and placed the rose on the wet mud covering him.

“It has been three days”, she said, “I feel so lonely. You had said you would be with me forever.”

A tear formed in her eyes and rolled down through her wrinkles. She felt the breeze ruffling her hair but she didn’t feel him kiss her cheeks as he tried to collect her tears.

GRIM FACED

It was a bright morning and the light breeze carried songs of the birds with it. I stood under the tree beside the footpath enjoying its shade. People walked by in a hurry with grim faces, their laptop bags slung over their shoulders. They seemed to be lost in their own thought and the brightness of the day seemed to be hurting them.

I smiled at them. They looked at me with disapproval on their faces.

“Do you have nothing productive to do?” they asked me.

“But I am spreading smiles”, I said, “It is such a beautiful day and nobody is smiling.”

They looked confused.

“Do you get paid to spread the smiles?” they asked.

“Of course not”

They shook their heads and walked away with their grim faces.

An hour later, a van stopped near me and four men in white coats jumped off it. They stood around me, seemingly afraid to touch.

One of them asked, “Why do you keep smiling at random people?”

“So that they smile back”, I replied, “They look like they have forgotten how to smile.”

“Oh, is it?” he looked amused.

Two men held my hands and led me to the van. People gathered around to see me go.

“Glad that they are taking him”, they said to each other, “the street looks normal now.”

I looked at those grim faces bobbing on those shoulders. Dreams of success played in their eyes. Dreams of happiness were squashed long ago.

They locked me up in some facility and tried to wipe my smile off.

They let me go when I was just another grim face like them.

NAMED

Celine was forty days old when her mother had carried her to the church and a priest named her.

She grew up to be a beautiful girl but she hated that name. She told her mother always that her name, Celine, was old school and she should have been named with a cool name like those famous teen stars.

I didn’t know that she had applied for a change of name.

She came to me and said that her name is now Rianne. She told me to erase that stupid, old name of hers from my memory.

But I couldn’t do it.

Hidden from her, I had scribbled her name everywhere. The back pages of my books, the inside of the wardrobe and on everything I used and loved, there was ‘Celine’ scribbled. In some places, a little heart sat next to her name.

The day she began her new life as Rianne, I felt like I was caged in her past.

THE LITTLE DROP OF SUNSHINE

I was playing in the garden outside, setting up little sticks in groups of ten. The grass danced to the melody of the breeze and the sunshine rained down in little droplets of gold. I could see my parents, trying to hold my hands and telling me where to go. We are shaping your childhood, they said to me. With my back to them, I picked up the sticks and poked them to the ground. They asked me what I was doing and I said I’m building my dream. They wanted to see and tried to peep over my shoulder but I didn’t let them.

The rain of sunshine stopped and I could see the darkness moving swiftly towards me. My parents looked scared and they rushed to me. Your life as an adult is beckoning, they said pointing to the dark. They told me to shake off the golden droplets and be ready. We are always there for you, they said.

A droplet hiding in my hair, dropped to my shoulder and slid to my palm. I trapped it there and entered the night.

The darkness knew that I was holding a ray of sunshine. It was furious, like a wild bear being taunted. It tried to pry open my palm and asked me why I would want to carry something like that with me. I said I wanted to hold on to my innocent days of light.

The darkness laughed. It hit me with stones and crashed me against the walls. Stop being a fool, it said.

But, I held on. I knew that the morning would come and the dark would be gone.

I am living my life in the dark, with hope trapped in my hand.
I am smiling, even though the little drop of sunshine is burning a hole in my palm.

DID HE SMILE?

He was sure he did, standing near the steps on his first day of college. At least, he knew he had thought about it, when that mesmerizing girl in her blue flowing dress had flashed him the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. But a second later, her smile ceased abruptly and she hung her head as if embarrassed and walked off.

She told her friends and they told their friends that the new boy doesn’t smile.

He then tried to smile at people in random, but they looked surprised. They didn’t know if they could risk smiling at him and being embarrassed in front of their friends. By the time they had decided, he was gone.

When he decided to get married, he did not smile at the girl whom he met. He thought she would not smile back at him and it would not look good when you are meeting a person for the first time. She liked him because he didn’t smile and she didn’t believe in smiles.

His children were beautiful, no doubt, but they didn’t learn to smile from their parents. They would go out to school and look at the strange expression on people and wonder what it is.

When he was dying, his neighbors gathered around his bed carrying grim faces. And then, he smiled. It was such a beautiful smile, smooth and red like the sun who was kept hidden all through the night.

Their jaws dropped and eyes bulged. They ran out leaving him at his bed. They said he was possessed by the ghosts of the past.