Month: November 2018

The blunt end of a small blade rests between my thumb and index finger. Pushing the sharp edge against the tip of a pencil, I peel off layers of wood and graphite. I spin the pencil as I glide the sharp knife against the graphite’s edge, slowly but with precision until the end feels sharp against my index finger. After few minutes, I tuck the knife back in my pocket. The pencils go inside my metal case. I rest against the concrete wall to rest.

In front of me is a drinking well. Cylindrical in shape, the well is four feet tall. The top covered with two semi-circles of concrete, it provides drinking water through a series of underground piping. It is located behind my Harabeji’s house and my old neighbor’s house. To the left of Harabeji’s house, an alleyway snakes out into the main road. To the left of the alley is another house. This is where the twins live. And between the twins and another house is yet another alley. This another house is just next to my old neighbor’s house. The two alleys connect two “main” roads, surrounded by five houses.

I stand next to the wall in front of the well to shade myself against the heat. A memory comes to me. I’m not sure if it really happened, an imagination sprouting from a story I once read, or simply a dream.

This is what happened, or what I remember from that bright summer day. A gaggle of people fills the two small alleys. As if playing a game of tug of war, each stand an arm’s length behind one other. The air is eerily quiet and no one is taking the lead. In unison, they pull a short and thick rope. Sweat beads down their sun-kissed faces, and they continue pulling.

I’m too small to help, and so I do what I do best. I stand back and observe. There is no one to indulge my curiosity but it appears a man has fallen inside. I’ve never seen adults hang around here. Why would anyone be so stupid to fall INSIDE the well? The tug-of-war goes on for some time. How long can a man stay afloat with no space to tread water? How much time do we have before gulping for our last breath? How long can he hold on to the end of a rope? I’m too short to peer inside, and I know it’d be inappropriate to do so, even if I were a beanstalk.

My memory stops there. Did the man survive? Or was it a woman? Was it a dream?

I jolt myself back to the present. I spend a lot of my time here. Lost in my own thoughts, sharpening pencils. Creating worlds of my own imagination.

I start writing on a notebook, held together by a spiral metal spine. After a while, I interrogate the pencils once again. Testing the sharpness of the lead with my index finger, I take out the trusty knife to make the tips pointy again.

I am covered in black, head to toe. Too hot for this heat. Or, maybe not. The weather turns. Scattered rain quenches the heat and my arms grow cold.

A cappuccino arrives in grey porcelain cup with a floating heart atop the dark liquid.

“The origin of religion and the fact that we are Indian…” the man in front has an audience: his family. I don’t have headphones to drown him out.

My eyes move onto the screen as I change the pronoun from she to I.

Because this is my story. As I peer into my past, what I once thought trivial is turning rather interesting. Even academic. An internal chuckle. Rice paddies. Drizzles. Tadpoles and dragonflies.

I clean up a chapter from moving onto the next.

I remember the texture of what remains of rice stalks under my feet, in the midst of autumn festival. Hard and strong, it is the same bristle we use to sweep rough surfaces to clean away the grime.

As daylights get shorter, winter will arrive. Without a doubt, it will bring snow and cold rain to freeze the water underneath, to create another playground to keep us busy. Until the ice breaks, becomes messy slush, before it is set free to give life another chance to thrive with the dawning of spring!!!

I stop by a colleague’s desk for no specific reason. What do you know?She also loves to write. A coffee date is promptly scheduled for Thursday. Maybe we could push and pull each other to unleash our words into this world. Then I read the last 5 pieces on this very site.

Words I desperately needed to soothe the fear inside. Reminders to be grateful. To not worry about the things outside of my control. To wait it out without the great freak out.

Streams of worry and fear flow through fossils of previous thoughts crafted when I was in a much better state of sanity.