I close my eyes and I am time-tunneled to another world where I see myself riding my bike on a cold yet warm early morning on the roads that belong to my childhood. Riding through the same old potholes, feeling secure in their existence. It is a morning after one of the coldest nights, as informed in the news yesterday by the very beautiful woman on the News Channel. The flowers are still asleep; the sun is still getting over its sinking feeling from last night as I ride my bike through it all to my favorite broken uphill road. It is quiet and I can hear myself breathing fast from the ride up the road. I smile because it is easy to smile right now, life has not happened yet for me. I am still naïve and a dreamer who believes in the goodness of the heart. I am untouched by the numbness of depression.
The cold wind blows giving me numb ears, I take in the smell of wet grass mixed with the wet mud. This is home, even when I am surrounded by the wildness of a cold winter morning. Reaching the top of the road always gives me pride and today too I timed myself. It seems like the road is getting easier, little did I know life hadn’t even started yet.
As I sit on the broken pavement made of red bricks I am forced to witness the beauty of nature around me. I can see the old, dilapidated hut made of dark wooden planks. The planks are all worn out by the varied moods of the weather, but the door is still intact. Strong and locked since forever. It is strange that the pathway to the hut is still guarded by unbeatable wooden fence and long green bushes even when it welcomes no one. My eyes try to look through the uneven bushes and notice for a strange insect crawling out from its hiding after the rain last night. Suddenly a cold wind blows my hat off just in time for me to catch it from flying away. I see him clearly now, sneakily crawling under the fallen brown leaves wet from the rain, heading somewhere, I guess. It crawls all alone, unaware of me observing him. I try to look around in the nearby bushes if there are more like him, probably his friends, but find no one. Looking at his loneliness I am made aware of my own loneliness on a cold morning and I start to feel cold and scared. My eyes look around and find the door of the hut still closed. My friends are late again. I look around but only find my new creepy green crawly friend getting closer. It climbs on the broken brick pavement and plops down, right next to me as if he had been searching his way up here all this while. He stops crawling and just relaxes. We smilingly greet each other. That very moment I hear the voices of my friends climbing the broken uphill road. I turn around to smile at them.
As I sit here in the loneliness and cold wilderness of the present world trying to remember those days, I hear the same birds chirping, breeze making sounds with the trees. But I don’t hear them. No one is trying to ride up to the broken uphill road to get me. Life has finally happened. At times like these, I am not even able to hear my lonely heart beating. Beating hard to let me know that I still exist in this world.
Black Coffee and Grey Stories 