Writers' Bloc...

The last few months have been kinda' busy, what with the onset of a flurried work life taking it's toll on my time for (much cherished) written pursuits.

I am at home right now, back in Mumbai, for the dearly awaited long Independence weekend and boy, it sure feels good!

Meanwhile, here's a post on my maiden attempt at short story writing. Incidentally, this one was written for a short story competition, held back at work. The rules for the competition were as under:

The story had to be no longer than 9000 odd character spaces

The story had to be woven in continuity and sequence around the sentences highlighted

The title of the story, "A Walk to Remember" had to have a considerable bearing on the outcome of the story


Read on then...

Read on then...

After a hard week of activity at work, I was desperately in need of some much needed solitude and space for myself. And so that chilly Friday evening in the month of December I decided to walk down from work, in Flora Fountain, to the good ole’Colaba woods – a place that I had begun to believe, was “my very own,” that afforded me calm and quiet and nursed me back to strength, metaphorically, from the emotional ravages of time on my psyche. Here, in the woods I felt cocooned and protected from it all.

As always that winter evening too the woods were lovely, dark and deep, in the way they had always been. Perhaps darker and deeper, on second thoughts, given the curdled state of mind I was in. A broken relationship does that to you. More so if you just broke up the day before. Wedging my way through the thicket, I proceeded for the farthest corner for fear of being sighted by any familiar faces. I was not up for exchanging any kind of pleasantries. This was prized time for myself and I was going to make sure it stayed that way! To my good fortune, the woods wore a deserted look that evening, just the way I had hoped it would be. Sighing in relief I sat myself down upon a broken tree stump and before long was lost in a train of thoughts. Then suddenly, as if from nowhere, my ears were alerted to the sound of faint sobs in the distance. The tone was unmistakably that of a woman. I peered my head to get a better look. She was seated with her head tossed on the shoulders of the man beside her as he made futile attempts at consoling her. “I want to experience motherhood,” she sobbed, “to know the essence of what it means to be a woman. I want to love, be loved, care, feel cared for and feel fulfilled…” and having bared the vacuum of her barren hopelessness thus, she pivoted her heavy head at a slant, staring blankly at the cold winter sky in a manner as if she were expecting it to sympathize with her and then lamented, “I have always wanted to have children and now it’ll never be possible,” in an unguarded outburst of raw display of emotion, the very sight of which lent my heart out to her cause.

So they were man and wife then, I deduced. Married yet unable to conceive a child of their own! Some irony that, I thought to myself. God does play dice. Why else then, in a country 900 billion strong and still growing would he single out this one couple so as not to have a child of their own? It was not fair. But then life was never known to be fair. Had it been that way, Tara and I would never have broken up after 4 years of a steady relationship. As I helplessly sat there pondering over the ever elusive mystery that was life, my attention was suddenly drawn to the sight of bright colored balloons that dotted the sky. There they were in all shapes and colors, rising effortlessly higher and higher making a very pretty sight in contrast to the moonlit canvas of that cold winter sky. If only it were possible for me to experience that kind of lightness right now…if only…! Drawing myself back from that thought, I was now curious to know who let up those balloons, setting them free into the wilderness? It was then that I noticed a bright faced and cheerful little girl, no more than six years of age walking past in the direction of that unhappily married couple. She sold balloons for a living, I gathered, seeing the clutch of plentiful balloons suspended tightly from her small fists. Boldly and yet in all her innocence, she walked up to the couple and sat beside them. She had heard the woman cry and in a bid to comfort her, intended to give her a couple of her brightly coloured balloons so as to pacify and calm her.

“Why are you sad,” she asked of the woman...

Then as if it didn’t matter why anymore, she said “here, have some of these. They’re the best I have. Watch them rise into the sky and they will make you feel better. My mother used to say so every time I cried when I unhappy...but that was when she was alive…” And then as if filled with longing and looking skyward the lil' baloon girt too quietly burst out into tears.

The couple was startled by what had happened until now. And the man - he was visibly at a loss for words. Moreover, he suddenly seemed to be acutely conscious of the attention coming his way - first an inconsolable wife and now this! How was he to handle it? Distressed, he looked in the direction of his wife.

Catching the cue from him, though still choking over her sadness, the woman summoned her voice to ask “And what about your father little girl?” “I have never seen Pa. Ma used to say, he left for the war and never returned. But I know he and ma are safe up in their new home in heaven because everytime I miss them, I release a balloon into the sky and when it rises higher and higher I know Ma and Pa are waiting to receive it from me. Then I know that they still love me…and are looking over me and I am happy again,” she said she chuckling in her childlike glee, that seemed as if she had discovered a whole new happy world or herself.

I was speechless and overcome by emotion as I heard these words from that little girl that December evening. A broken relationship at 24, hard as it was on the lovelorn nerves, was one thing. But a broken family with nothing to look forward to, at a tender age of 6 is quite another! And to think, there was nothing to look forward in my life after Tara…

And then whilst I sat thinking about it, somewhere I got lost in thought as I re-ran the entire episode of events that fateful evening in my mind…Tara, my walk to the Colaba woods, the unhappy couple, the little balloon girl…My thought process was broken yet again…but this time by the cheerful and loud laughter of that little balloon girl as I saw her cuddled in the arms of that woman as she strode with pride along with her husband into that moonlit night away from the woods into a world they’d now call as ‘family.’ I knew that very instant, that there right before my eyes a family was made!

Yes, God did play dice that evening with three lonely people and this time they lived happily ever after as one family!!!

- Trevor Mark Fernandes