It Was Time For Our Introduction

The night is gruesome, with wild cold breeze disturbs my windows violently. The hairs on my hands react to windy coldness reaching my spine, my barely countable teeth chatters, I wrapped another set of blanket around my cold body. The night is cruel, bringing in the memories that were supposed to be buried.

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I staggered myself to the windows, creaking and growling, they threatened me of the lost memories. The winds were the harbinger of guilt in me, there was no time left. The black worn out blanket barely kept me warm, with the remaining frail strength I tried closing the strong windows.

Meanwhile the winds swooshed around me, howling a whisper in my ears. I was reminded of my youth, those strong arms and head full of healthy hair. Now all that remains, is the blackened scalp bereft of any evidence that once the black forest lay. I had an appointment tomorrow, for the painful chemotherapy. I was a victim of lung cancer or should I say survivor, but what is a life that can be nothing but hell. I just shouldn’t have laid my hands on cigarettes!

The winds stirred me and the garland from the photo hung above my head fell over my shoulders. With tears brimming in my eye, I look up to find my deceased wife smiling, draped with a beautiful violet saree and her round bindi decorating her elegance. She suffered my existence and now peacefully resting somewhere, I await my turn. It’s painful. I have lost my weight and look fragile and frail, just like the glass vase at the corner of my small room.

Cancer is a dangerous disease, eating a person from within, I didn’t know that they would gnaw my heart too. I look at my trembling fingers that are running on the dust on the window sill, it sure was better when she was alive. My calloused skin reminds me of the time that sickled me out, from every corner of my body.

I used be a road fighter, a kustipatu if you can call. With the same hands that used to lift hundreds of weight, they deceive me while taking a glass of water, drained of energy and scarred with disease. I look at the mirror that is adjacent to my cupboard.

The glass that slipped off made an echoing noise throughout the house. I heard a few steps that would be of my daughter. I gingerly walk to my bed and pretend to be asleep.

She walks in and switches on the light; the brightness pricks my closed eyes. I can’t bear too much of anything. I hear her pick the glass up and wipe the floor clean, and then she leans to check on me, gently pulling my blanket to cover the part of the legs that are exposed to the cold air.

I think she smiled but I don’t get why she is there with me, aiding to me while her family awaits her arrival. She stays with me with her only son, he is in college and barely visits me, a room that is few steps away from his.

Well, I’m no one to blame him, I was indeed the same. I realize now!

I don’t want him to realize it when he would turn seventy and have a suffocated breath! If not him to advance his hands, I’ll make an effort to learn.

And so I sat in-front of the computer that he uses daily, with love! I would learn this thing! I would make an effort to know him! Time plays and we will learn our lessons…I would die soon but he would know me better than a life on a tiny bed at the corner of the dark room. Things that I didn’t do for my son, I would do for him!

The next morning I made him a cup of tea, trembling; while he was busy indulged in the machine! It was time for us to introduce each other.