I was once a girl...not little but still naive and meager.
"Hff...pa-papa--"
Through my shuttering breath, I bit my tongue and clutch my summoning arm to that shirt pristine white which my mother bought me a week before with glimmer in her beautiful eyes that some quoted as 'mrignayan' however, wasnt it a shamd that my eyes were plain, with no shine or shimmer to make people jaw down- a beggar's cry that I glup down my slender throat like the halahal which shiv drank to save the said universe however, this painful cry that I were pressing down was only in an attempt to save myself from the paper tags of nuisance that many stapled over my soul like those price tags on goods, materials of daily life. afterall what was I if not a cheap plastic- good for nothing in the end.
They said, once you step on a new ground, a path that was never taken, never known or at least known but never walked on, a strip of blooming grass still fresh and untouched, a mellow meadow in spring-it stirred something strangely gloomy within this vessel of mass, skin and bone, a trembling fear like a hissing python crawling underneath your skin. A shiver within, my arms coiled around my chest as if guarding my innocent heart against whom...I don't know but, It's snowing and I'm in a mystical forest with a looming crescent moon above the horizon. I still remember with my haunting and terrified eyes I looked around searching for familiarity, a sense of kindness or perhaps a gentle smile but Noone was really caring as if I were wearing an invisible cloak, my breath caught on the rustle of unfamiliar things. I watched for signs in cracked stones, read threat in every shadow just like a house mouse, existing through cracks and shadows. Doesn't I dream to touch the shimmering brim of happiness...that particular warmth, the light which my finger wished to touched, always a step ahead. The light which through a dense canopy of foreign blood, my heavy but alert eyes followed. A glittering silhouette of the empty hands that once carried my timid body. I wish to slip my arm and fill the emptiness that maybe I created, Then 17, I was too excited to be seventeen (a dream I never dreamt) or rather too afraid to confront the fact that she were onto the path of the same adulthood which bleed all the joy, calmness and sweat out of the life of the derivatives of this blood that sped within my veins.
"What are you slacking about, little lady?! Do you wish to get lost within this crowd?!" Once he screached right into my bottled face from which terror was leaking, I was all ready to burst out in embarrassing downpour.
"Do you?!" he asked with a thunderous roar, instantly, I swung my head in an intense 'No!' and my lacrimal gland were in attempt of sucking all the puddle of tear that it intended to fill. Drenched in sweat, his face puffed red like a tomato, and his wide eyes searched mine with those bloodshot gaze which were not because of sleep depravity but because of vitamin and iron deficiencies he never thought of checking with the chemist he visited, frequent enough to bestow an informal title of 'family doctor' over him with a crusader's sword.
A nasty tear slipped down my sunken cheeks.
"Just Hurry up" he sighed hopelessly, and turned around with a hefty head. "We have a train to catch"
"Hm" just a muffle escaped my lips as he continued not only his walk retracting his old pace.
"Guddu, now you are old enough, work with your consciousness" Quitely, I just followed behind him, following his warmth like circling the gigantic bonfire on the night of lohri.
"I will not stay here for too long, to lead you, it's your path and you need to conquer it"
Now the warmth has shifted from a carm touch, I felt like I were a sun, burning with explosions of helium and hydrogen or atleast there was something burning hot at the centre of my chest, a sensation that stopped my feet, thoughts and every my heartbeat for a while.
"I can shield you once or twice but one day you need to face it all by yourself."
I can see those silver hairs which filled that face which looked paler, a memory I guess but no it was a recollection like those VHS tapes which were stored within a iron box, behind an outdated lock which has a unique pattern of key to it tucked to some corner that no naughty hands might reach them. "Don't worry, I will shield you as long as I could" a slime of cripples, those forgotten fingers still feel fresh like wind cuddling these dense locks of mine.
We are here to survive, to live a life of selfishness but some...a few of them survived others through words of kindness, actions and by expressions which are not expressed by words but yet loved. He, that old man with silver flaked hair was that man, a man of hard mass, of strong resolution and of unfamiliar kindness.
'Chooo! Choooooo!' A loud horn of the train and a vibrant shook through my body, My eyes adjusted to the sandy terrains which shifted in front of my gaze. A walking picture where thin tree with deep green needle like leaves sped backwards while I'm ascending forward to the place I called hometown.
I'm 19 years now, a girl introduced into womanhood, Anew...I remind myself that the foreign land is now claimed, a temple of memories that I rest my forehead to now, singing a symphony like I were a successful composer- nose high and my fingers move to the notes almost ticklish within my knuckles in a strange sensation.
This must be how a house mouse felt like when all the life is drained from the home and it becomes a house-hollow and empty structure of bricks and stones stacked on one another. One earthquake and all the rock become plain and that structure collapses...how shall the life survive within that prancing mouse?