At the beginning, it was a big
room full of people. My school friends, colony friends, and cousins, lots of
cousins. Those in the room were mostly my age, though I could spot my elder
cousins too. And oh, mummy-papa. They were always around.
Most people in the room were chatty
and sociable. Not all of them talked among each other, but almost everyone
talked with me. I liked it. I was too busy with friends and cousins to spend
much time with mummy-papa, though from the corner of my eye I always saw them
smiling beatifically at me. Only a very few people, along the fringes of the
room, didn’t talk to me, though some of them did talk to mummy-papa. I didn’t
care much about those people.
Everyone in the room always
walked, usually in a straight line. I didn’t mind it because I walked with them.
Sometimes I would pause to spend time with some of them; they would pause too,
but we found ourselves walking again, I had no clue why.
Every now and then I came upon a
closed door. I was apprehensive of opening it, but found myself opening it
anyway, I had no clue why. Walking through a door meant entering a new, though
similar, room. It wasn’t so bad because most of the people around me walked
through the same door that I did, so we kept seeing each other in the new room.
Some people, though, did not. In case they walked through a different door, I
never saw them again, I had no clue why. This usually happened with my school
friends. My cousins and mummy-papa always queued up behind me to walk through
the same door.
Sometimes after walking through a
door, I saw unknown faces entering the new room through other doors that opened
into it. Then, the unknown faces walked with me - they also became school friends. I liked it.
One day, I noticed someone who
had been walking with me since the beginning was missing. I turned around and
ran to the door I had come through to go back to the previous room. Maybe he
was languishing at the end of the queue, and someone had shut the door. I tried
really hard but the door never unlocked, I had no clue why. Soon, I found
myself walking towards the next room.
After walking through hundreds of
doors, I came upon another. As was usual, I waited for others to queue up
behind me. But no one did. I looked around and saw everyone standing against a
door of their own. Each and every one. I had no clue why. I tried really hard
to not open the door, but found myself opening it anyway, I had no clue why.
Opening this door put me in an
unusually big room. I saw uncountable new faces walking into it through still
more uncountable doors. I looked around but I could see none of the old faces,
only the new ones. I was scared. I ran back to the door and saw mummy-papa
standing there. They were not walking with me but their presence in the same
room was comforting. Somehow they’d managed to sneak in through the door when I
was urging my friends and cousins to do so, which they never did. I hugged
mummy-papa tight and asked them about others. They said every one of them had
entered an unusually big room of their own, called college. I wondered why they didn’t walk
into my room, it was big enough to accommodate them. I didn’t try unlocking the
door because I knew it wouldn’t yield.
Some of the new people in this
unusually big room soon became chatty and sociable - they became college friends. I liked it. The new big room was also likeable because there were no doors to walk through here. There was a
lot of walking alright, but sans doors. My favourite faces were always visible,
walking with me. Sometimes some of them turned less chatty, but they kept
walking with me. The dreaded memory of walking through the last door was now
distant.
While walking through this big
room I was also bombarded with a host of old faces that had gone missing a long
time back. They entered through blue-coloured “f”-shaped doors. I never cared much about
them.
The best part about the new room
was the discovery of hidden doors that lay off the walking path. Passing
through them allowed me to enter another, smaller room where some of my old
favourite faces became visible again. This place had a nice smell, I called it home. They told me they’d found secret doors in
unusually big rooms of their own.
Mummy-papa were the only ones
present in both the rooms, though I talked much more with them in the smaller
one. Out there in the bigger one, I only saw them from the corner of my eye –
smiling beatifically at me, as always. I sometimes wanted to spend more time in
the smaller room, but I found myself walking back to the door that opened into
the bigger room, I had no clue why. With time, however, I discovered that some
of the old faces in the smaller room had become blurred or invisible, I had no
clue why.
One day, my long walk in the big
room was abruptly interrupted by a door. Trying to keep out memories of the
previous door, I shut my eyes and desperately hoped for others to queue up
behind me. But no one did. I looked around and saw everyone standing against a
door of their own. Each and every one. For the first time, I had a clue why. Then,
mummy-papa quietly queued up behind me. This time, I didn’t let them go
unnoticed. Only they walked through this door with me, no one else. Not even
one.
The new room that I walked into
was much smaller than the previous one. I knew no one here and far fewer
unknown faces entered it. It smelt bad, I called it workplace. Some of them were good, but it wasn’t the same as any
of the previous rooms. I didn’t like it. To my delight I found that hidden
doors to home still existed, but it was much harder to walk through them, and the faces
on the other side had become ever more blurred and diminished.
I continue to walk through doors,
or more accurately, somnambulate through them, for there’s hardly a familiar face
to be left behind anymore. Well, mummy-papa are still around, but their presence
grows stronger and clearer by the day.
I do secretly wish, though, for a
really long walk in the opposite direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment