Wings!

This one has been selected by “Women Era” group for publication. Have Received Rs.600.00.for it. See how profitable being a writer is. In the past few years I must have earned total sum of Ten thousand Rupees for writing.Princely.

Wings!
Five A.M. tiptoed in and gently shook me awake. Bleary eyed and groggy, I sat up on a much used, worn out, mat. That, valiant if threadbare, piece of cloth, had tried all night, to cushion my aching body from the unforgiving embrace of a dusty, ruthlessly hard, concrete floor.

I looked around and tried my best to recall where I was. I could not.

I could see, that I was in a huge hall. It was illuminated by single, naked, electric bulb. If anything, it served to increase the eeriness of the place, as it peeked down at us from the roof. Us? I was not alone. A little distance from me, a lot of bodies were asleep, in small huddles. Each was enveloped by a sleep so thick, that only deep exhaustion could have induced it.

The place was also infested with cockroaches and similarly eeky, slithery beings. I felt one wriggle up my leg, under my pajamas. My hand came down on it, hard; ending its journey on this planet. It’s, crushed, lifeless, body tumbled down to the floor.

Where I was, came to me in a trice!

I stood up and began tiptoeing amongst the sleeping lot, careful not to wake them up. I was looking the reason of me being where I was.

I found him. He was sleeping a little distance away, with his friends. I tiptoed back to my place.

If, even as early as a week ago, any body had told me, that I would have to leave the Five Star (wife, running water, television, cars, air-conditioning etc) lifestyle available to an average, middle class Indian male (none of these, except wives in plenty, was available even to monarchs such as Akbar The Great) and find myself, in this dilapidated place, more than sixteen hundred miles from home, I would have laughed at his face.

If he had still persisted and predicted that all this would happen due to the younger of my two children, I would have called him a fantastically fertile soothsayer. Simply, because, the boy in question was still a few months shy of his tenth birthday; too young, to drive me either bankrupt or to involve me in a crime scam.

Yet, he would have been absolutely right!.

At the present moment, however, there were some urgent things to attend to, like, answering the call of nature. Quietly, so as not to wake up any body else, I picked up my toiletries and clothes, and negotiated a path through a spate of bodies lying on the floor. I had to beat them to the toilets. Last night I had counted. There were only four such cubicles and my inmates easily numbered a few over sixty.

Once they got up, the queue would be a mile long.

After relieving my self on an ‘Indian style’ lavatory (a very uncomfortable posture for one not used to using it), I moved to the adjoining bathroom. Along with the door, its light bulb too was missing.

But there was no one around to admire my body beautiful, so I stripped myself and groped in the dark for the taps. Thankfully, the water, when it hit me, was refreshingly cool. I sat down under the steady stream, to enjoy, what seemed at that moment, like a major luxury. My eyelids sheathed my eyes, allowing my mind to hark back to the recent past.

It all did start some seven-eight-nine days ago. I was a bit a late that evening, and the three people in my life were awaiting me on the dinner table. One could cut it with a knife, so thick was the buzz around them. Naturally I panicked.

I rushed to only refuge available to a married father in his home; the washroom. I needed time to think. As I splashed some water on my face, I also started ticking off the list of things which the house hold did not need. Naturally, they were on their “must buy” list.

I cursed the television and the ad agencies.

I could not, however, stay in the bathroom all night. I had to look up at myself in the mirror. What was I worried about? Wasn’t I the MAN, the lord and the master of this house? I was. I mean at least on paper, I was. But that is where the problem lay. Being the man of the house is no longer an advantageous portfolio to hold.

But I am a fighter. Yes sir, I am. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I practiced the foulest looking frown that my visage could support and stepped out.

It had the desired effect. They went deadpan as soon as I joined them; that is, if you call smiling from ear to ear being deadpan. And I had them worried, as worried as a tigress and her cubs would be, as they saw dinner approaching them.

I decided to grab the feminine bull by her horns. Laconically I pulled a chair out and sat down. Leaning back on it, I raised my left eyebrow, stylish like, like I have seen the Big Bee do in countless flicks, and in my gravest and deepest baritone, asked, “Well?”

It plunged my daughter into spasms of giggles. “Well…?!” I repeated, this time a trifle sheepishly, even a bit plaintively.

“Limbdiiii!” whooped, Achyut, my younger one, fairly knocking his chair back, as he jumped to his feet and threw his small arms in the air.

A week later, soaked to skin in that small, door less washroom, I could not help smiling, as I recalled his obvious joy.

Limbdi! No it is neither a war cry nor a new expletive; actually it’s a small town, situated bang on N.H 8A.It is midway between Ahmdabad and Rajkot. We, my son, his team of sixty odd, and I, were on our way to this tiny blip on the cluttered geographical map of Gujarat.

All of us had reached Ahmdabad last evening, after a thirty-six hour journey from our home town. The chosen mode of transport had been a second-class bogey of an Indian Railways’ train.I wanted AC two tier at least if not a flight. Was overruled. Son dearest had insisted on, ‘traveling with the team.’

The ‘team’ would compete in various age groups (of both genders) in a national tournament of that new, in-fashion four-letter word of English language, ‘Yoga’.

However, seven days ago, I had not capitulated easily on the dinner table. No Sir! “How can we send you alone?” I had wondered. “Come on Papa…I am nine…!!” “Yes you are nine, sweetheart…nine! And I do not even know where of all the places is this godforsaken Limbdi?”

I had looked at the wife for support, she just looked back, wordless, So I said,” I did not know they held tournaments for… for…for yoga? That too Nationals?? And so far off …”

Thankfully, I bit my tongue off before I blurted, “How…Why did they pick you?!” Instead, I looked down at the itinerary Achyut had handed me, “Return…return after… ten.. TEN ! days!!” I glanced at the wife again. She simply rolled her eyes. I paused. There had to be something more.

What?

An invisible signal passed between son and mom, and Achyut leaned towards me, to put the gold medal he had been hiding under the table, around my unsuspecting neck. Amazed, I looked down at it and then at the certificate that his elder sister pressed into my hand.

It informed me that Achyut Mehra had won the first place in our state’s interschool yoga tournament!

I was floored.

But was still too scared to let him go. He did not even have an inkling that a life other than the Seven Star (add two parents and a doting elder sister, to my Five) one, he knew, existed. No, I could not send him. Did he know he would have to carry his own bags? And he was so fussy about the food he ate.

He went off to his bed, in tears. His equally distraught sister followed. Alone, the wife too admitted that she was torn between letting him go and the insecurity of sending him, so far away, with unknown people. No one from his school was accompanying him. We sat on the table, staring at the food. There was no appetite left.

Later, I tiptoed to their room and peeked, he was sleeping, snuggled against his sister. Gently, I ruffled his hair. He sighed. Secure in his little insulated world.

Back in my room, I sat down on my desk and began making a list. “What are you doing?” asked his mother.

“You know something? I never stood first in anything, anything, in life. Never!”

Wife was silent. She was not prepared for what followed, “My son is going,” I declared.” But not alone! I am making a list of people to call tomorrow, to cancel my appointments….things to postpone….”

“You cannot do that..” she gasped… “Your work.. You cannot afford it…ten days? Unplanned…! How will you spend time with these kids…? Let it be. I will talk to him. He will manage, let him learn. He will be fine.”

I was on that train, with my son a week later. The ‘yoga coach’ accompanying us had assured us that the ‘Ashram’ holding the tournament would have a welcome party ready to receive us at Ahmdabad station.
There was none.

Leaving me at the platform with the kids, the coach ran off with his assistant. An hour later he came back with the happy news that a nearby place of worship had agreed to let us rest our weary heads in its community hall.

I suggested a hotel room to Achyut. Overruled.

Nearby, meant almost two kilometers. And we had to walk the distance. Silently, I cursed his mother, for packing such a lot of clothes, and knick knacks for her darling. She and he had simply brushed aside my protests.

The other kids had much smaller bags. Obviously, as none else, had a dad around to pick the luggage. I had to lug his luggage as well as mine.

As I groaned under the weight , I looked at Achyut, walking ahead, happily chatting with his friends, even as the party trudged to their evening abode. When one of his newfound pals staggered, my little boy simply looked up at his dad with big, admiring eyes. I happily freed the friend of his load.

My son beamed. That is why I was there. To see him smile, laugh and enjoy. My own father never had the chance to do that for me. Life did not permit him. He was simply too busy and then he was gone. I smiled back. Happy as he was. Spontaneously without any bidding, he hugged me, enriching me. Father and son had found, hitherto unknown, kinship in the past two days.

I was actually doing nothing out of ordinary. I was simply repaying a debt, that too in part. Each generation teaches its next to fly, to survive on its own. I was there to look after mine, as he took his first faltering steps, tested his wings. For a while, I would fly alongside and let him soar. He would be diffident at first, but I would be there, always ready to put my wings under his, in case he needed to rest .

One day, I know he will take off and leave me behind, too weak and tired to keep up with him. Misty eyed, my duty done, I will smile.