D**** the five letter word

Dear Diary,

I saw a strange movie. I walked out of the theater telling my friends how I liked the movie.
Then they pointed out how it was all about death..Even though the ending was happy the message of death being inevitable was hammered in with all nuts and bolts secured.

I walk into the empty house..switch on lights just to make me feel better. The music is playing loud. I feel in a daze.

For the uninitated I went to see and Australian movie called "Look Both Ways". The movie pencils a bunch of characters around a train freak accident of man trying to catch hold of his dogs. In the background is the running news of a huge train crash killing several.

Its about a couple of people who have started seeing death everywhere.
It was actually very well directed movie. I soaked it all...the direction, the acting..the mix of animation.. the concept all of it. And yet now I feel drained. Drained of some spirit.

I want to tell you how it reminded me of all the train accidents which we have witnessed only in the news (at least me!) How after a while it becomes numbers on the screen. One forgets how it might effect the ones involved. How rarely do we shed tears for unknown strangers.
Yet its inevitable..we all die one day. We all die alone..and we each have to cope with it our own way.

So I sit here and stare at my computer, at loss for words to describe how it feels! Perhaps you should watch the movie..and maybe you will understand what it is I want to tell you. No! i am not here to advertise a movie, but to advertise bits of entertaiment to remind you the five lettered
truth called Death!

love
me

Split Milk..

I can visualize the whole thing in slow motion. The urge to get up and switch radio station..the slight brush of hand in the process...and all that chai on my spik and span carpet. The next minutes are spent in scrubbing away ferociously..with paper towels and windex..and as far as I can tell in the low lighting, they have done their job.

Now I can rue over the lost cup of tea, the wasted paper and the possibility of a stain on the carpet.

I know the saying..no point in crying over spilt milk. But sometimes I wonder if some remorse would help avoid it next time. So far I haven't found a solution as my dear friend will concur :)

Which brings me back to the point, should we blame ourselves for the mistakes we make so we will remember in future. And do we ever remember ? Is it at all possible to learn from our mistakes.
Would I redo somethings if given a second chance. Perhaps, but at that point I didn't have any more knowledge than what led to the mistake.

We all deserve second chances to prove ourselves...but what happens when we fail time and again?
What makes us get up...and re make that cup of tea and place it next to us (to really strech the analogy!)?

Page turner

I want to know how it ends even before I have read the first paragraph. But I am not allowed to turn to the last page. After all I have to get to know all the characters and how they relate before I can get (to) the end.

So I purse through the pages, in anticipation....in expectation..of the wonderful..of the horror ..
of the tragic.. of the unexpected...

There are days when I am disappointed..there are days when its all and more than what I expected.

On the beautiful bright days, I want to read it all again. This time very patiently, reading every line..every description and when I get to the end..its a whole new story!

Phone sshphone..

You and I don't make sense, Its like our friendship was an error in the global settings. A blip on the blank screen..the one that wasn't supposed to be there.
Its a miracle we have been friends for this long.

Hold on..what are you talking about ?

See there...you have no idea what we have been conversing about for the past 10 minutes..yet you refuse to hang up the phone

Hang up on you? When have I hung up the phone on you?

Ah..but you would like to won't you? I mean..we carry out these meaningless conversations everyday..for half hour..when you would rather be watching a movie or something!

Actually I am watching a movie right now. Except neither the movie or what you are saying makes any sense to me.

Which brings me back to my point na? We just dont make sense.. why are we carrying out this charade of friendship? For what 3 years now?

Ah come on..who else can I call and watch a movie at the same time and fail understanding both?

Why dont you just watch your movie? Am sure its much more simple to understand

I was only joking da...

See! I cannot even tell when you are joking and when you are serious.

Hmmm

Hmm what? Why dont you just go back to..oh am sorry continue watching your movie?..

Now that you mention it..its almost nearing the end.. I will call you after its done.


Grrr.. Wrong choice..see you dont know anything about me..you dont know when I mean something and when I don't. Well BYE then...!

Hmm..ok..Bye talk to you later

The Open Window

I let him go. I could see those dark brown eyes staring at me through the window. I could see the questions I had not let him ask. I waved goodbye as the train whistled. The tears appeared in his eyes involuntarily. He would not blink his eyes though. The lady next to him gave me a reassuring look as if to say " I will take care of him, don't you worry!".

Worry? Is that what I felt at that moment? He had been a part of my life for the past three years.
My days and nights had revolved around him. What it had taken me to take that decision. To be left at the railway platform as the train had sped out of the station.
So there I stood almost wooden, stuck to the railway platform.

He was true to me for the rest of the years. He wrote to me every week. I answered his letters with great caution. Never letting him know how much I missed him. He never hid his feelings. The feelings mellowed down over the years though.

He was changing fast. The new city envoirment, new friends. a new family did him good. He was growing quite mature. At the same time his cautious handwriting had turned into a hurried scrawl.


It was a decade later that I was back standing at the same railway platform. My life was still very much the same. I had become the principal of Saint Roderiques Orphan School. It was a very demanding position. The Orphan school was residential one. And there were new admits every few months. Sometimes I wondered who produced these orphans? At other times, I thought perhaps it was God's way of creating a balance in the world. Where childless widows like me could find love. I thanked the Lord every day for the small mercies! For I had been allowed to be a mother to hundred instead of none.

So there I stood at the railway station to greet my son, who had now grown up to be a man.
Ravi had been a shattered 10 year old when he entered the orphanage. He had lived a life on the streets most of his childhood. I don't remember quite how he came to live with me. But he had trusted me from day one. So he had stayed with me. That was the first time I had been a mother to
a child. There in started a new life for me, Rosa Fernandes, a widow of ten years, still very much in love with her husband. Through Ravi, I became a part of the orphanage in a way which was more than endowing them with my good fortune.

Eventually of course there was a family who came to adopt him. Away he went to the city to be a part of a family. But he never forgot his foster mother.

So there I stood at the railway platform looking a 23 year old young man with a moustache waving at me. I could recognise him from several photographs that he had sent me.
This time the tears wouldn't stop flowing my from my eyes but I refused to blink. I was so proud of him. Proud of what he had become, proud of what he had made me!