He was looking at me for quite sometime now. I didn’t know what to do. Did he want to ask me something? Did he want to talk to me? After all, this was not the first time that he was looking at me. Should I go up to him and ask if he wants something or not? He was new so maybe he needed something.

He smiled.

Did he really? I thought he did.

He smiled again.

I smiled back.

He got up from his seat and started walking towards me. He is surely going to ask me my name. Or does he already know?

“Hi”.

“Hi”.

“May I sit here?”

“Yes”

“Didn’t you bring your tiffin?”

“I did. And it’s finished.”

“Belated Happy Birthday”.

I was taken aback.

“Thanks. But that was last week.”

“Yes, I know. I saw you in your new frock. I am new in class and I don’t know you well. I couldn’t say anything that day.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Here.”

He pulled out a package from his pocket. I opened it. Inside were seven candles.

“You are seven years old now, aren’t you? I heard your mom telling our painting ma’am that day. Mom had put eleven candles on my cake two months back. But I didn’t have enough pocket money to buy the cake. Will you be my friend? I’ll give you candles every year.”

Yesterday, he gave me seventy-six candles.

Another year gone and another year added to my monotonous and perhaps meaningless existence. Wished by everyone to have a great and exciting year ahead, I would perhaps sit down to reflect how to make it happen. It is never too easy to let go, especially when you have been thinking in terms of a lifetime. You need to have a certain amount of disdain to disassociate yourself from the object. Or else cultivate it to be able to free yourself from the cobwebs. So this is what I am reduced to now – teaching myself to hate. And hating myself for it. Looking ahead to another year with trepidation and hoping against hope that it would be somehow different. After all, things can’t get any worse than they already are.

( Dunno why do I have to make my posts so personal. I might as well have kept a diary. But my blogs don’t have much of a readership, so I guess its okay. Next time, I’ll write something sweet and mushy, something that I would want to happen to me. Till then, Ciao!! )

Cloudy morning, a cold sun.
Sound of murky water swiveling down the ducts.
Cry of a stray waking the straggler. Paper cups
Trodden and a cracked glass trying to
Make its presence known through
The vapor from a kettle.
My Dawn.


Silent walls hidden in the shadows
of street lamps. The chip under my slipper
on the dark terrace floor. The tangled strands
I pull from the comb. The wait for a
Beep on my cell phone.
My Night.