a masked woman was talking in a murmur and an old man with a distasteful cigar was talking loudly.
the child in the street next to your house was crying and his elder brother was secretly smoking a pipe. her mother had gone to work at the aristocrat’s fancy mansion and her husband had passed away two terribly lonely long years ago. the man who greets you everyday with a cheerful smile yet weary eyes is back to work. polishing shoes for five cents.
the woman who looks at you suspiciously every time you try to peep into her window while walking by her house is buying flowers today.
with the infinite number of people doing infinite number of things, you are in your room, slow music and dead lighting, by the fire when it’s cold and close to the open window when it’s raining, you are counting.
one, two, three.
maybe four or maybe more.
last week the electricity connection got cut because you couldn’t pay the bills on time. yesterday you didn’t receive the newspaper because you can’t afford it anymore. and today’s morning was awful because you woke up with a racing heart as you saw death in your last night’s dream.
you can count eleven. eleven problems.
it is all too much for you to bear.
life is terrible. life is nasty.
you desperately want to give up.
now let us both, you and i, take a walk down the road.
let us look outside your four walls. that woman in the mask was not wearing it out of her own will.
that old man smoking that distasteful cigar lost both, his wife and son in one go. that child in the street next to your house wasn’t crying. he was pleading for food. pleading for life. and a child could only cry. his elder brother secretly smoking a pipe hasn’t learnt to smoke from his dead father or not even from his widowed mother. he’s been pushed into it. he has touched the flame and now, he has found solace in getting burned slowly by the same flame. their mother is a single parent, a worker in that fancy house, her dreams are crushed and responsibilities have levelled up. she yearns for her husband’s love.
that man who polishes your shoes for five cents, greets you with a smile every time you come to him because somewhere, he has falsely accepted that he belongs to a class below yours. there’s nothing more miser and pitiful than that.
that woman who looks at you suspiciously every time you pass by her house doesn’t do so out of hate. she’s scared and hesitant because her childhood abuse haunts her till date. her movements are still controlled by her past’s demon.
and now, let’s resume your counting.
but i think you’d stop doing it yourself.
not one, neither eleven results into anything.
if you’re now going to ask me why she had been buying flowers, let me tell you.
that woman whose past haunts her still, that man whose hands groped her when she was young, that man, her grandfather, died a few days ago. it’s a family ritual, you must know too. putting flowers on the graves of those you’ve lost. to remember them once they’re gone. to cherish the moments you’ve lived with them. she’s going to put flowers there.
but even you know, merely putting flowers on his grave is not going to remind her anything about him.
nothing about the times they’ve lived together because even you know, she’ll never forget. and never cherish.