"Papa Calling"

December 2^nd, 2016; 4:15 p.m.

You don’t expect an expected call to deliver you an unexpected news. The words reverberated in my ears continuously. “Take the first flight back home.” It was as if I would wake up by the shrill voice of my phone’s ringtone, and the nightmare will be over. “Papa calling”” will flash across my screen and he will talk to me. About life, about business, about how proud he is of me, about my flight itinerary post end-term exams.

The floor beneath me sank, and so did my heart. My trembling legs ran as fast as they could. “Take the first flight back home.” I had bookings to make. Laptop in one hand, charger in another, shivering like anything, those two hundred meters felt like walking over ice. The lift was on the 3^rd floor, I needed to be on the 5^th. Right now.  Climbing close to a hundred stairs, gasping for breath, with a sunken heart and close to a thousand cramps in my stomach, I reached the fifth floor, ran straight to my friend’s room, threw the laptop in one corner of the bed and when my legs couldn’t hold the weight of my body and the heart couldn’t hold the weight of the shock, I tumbled down onto the other side and sobbed. Some distant voice sounded like a confused enquiry, a hazy frame holding my shoulders. All I could manage to utter from my choked throat and trembling lips was “Papa…”

The phone buzzed. “Papa calling.” It was as if he had called to talk to me. About life, about business, about how proud he is of me, about my flight itinerary post end-term exams. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

December 3^rd, 12:54 p.m.

This was the longest journey back home. I kept wiping my tears in the car, promising myself not to cry. There were a lot of cars parked in the street. We had to stop some distance away. As I pierced through the crowd, all eyes looked at me. Pity. Sympathy. I don’t know what it was. All I knew was I had to be near mom. Nothing less, nothing more. The crowd made way, it felt foreign in my own driveway. The backdoor entrance was cleared for me to pass. I took off my shoes and walked up to another crowd with familiar faces. Papa slept in the centre. His skin was darker than usual. There was a flower petal near his eyebrow, which I brushed aside. Everyone looked at mom and the four of us. And babaji’s glasses were dirty. They asked me to go hug papa. I couldn’t.

Thirty minutes later, the pyre burnt. I held babaji’s glasses in my left hand, borrowed a handkerchief and wiped the saline water off his glasses. Everyone moved to the side as the ashes came flying to our side. I looked as they set him on fire. I saw my father turn into ashes, flying towards me.

Last night, while I dragged my suitcase out of the lift, I heard a friend murmur, “Going home? Such a luxury.”

And right in this moment, I wanted to tell her.

“Oh you have a dad? Such a luxury!”

The Mayor's Cat.

“Curiosity killed the cat.” The little boy kept chanting and Harry was exactly seven seconds close to breaking his skull when Bob took him aside. “What is wrong with you? He’s just a little boy. Can’t you stay a little patient?” “I have tried being patient with this crackhead. We need to try a different way to extract information out of him. He is the only witness to the murder. And here he is, looking at me, repeating this meaningless line with a smirk on his face, as if threatening me to chicken out. The mayor is getting impatient by the minute. That loner’s life revolved around that bloody cat. What are we even doing here? What did I join the police for? To find a random cat’s murderer?” Bob was more calm. “It’s not a random cat. It was the mayor’s cat.” He spoke, still looking into the distance. He was thinking things through, trying to join the dots patiently. “Curiosity killed the cat.” There seemed to be something beyond the scope of what looked obvious. This little child couldn’t possibly be threatening us, he thought. “Curiosity killed the cat.” Bob’s instincts told him to look at this boy’s statement beyond the surface. He brainstormed too hard. He loved puzzles, and this was very interesting. He also loved kids, and he knew something was off with that kid. Kids aren’t evil. They’re supposed to be pure, right? He went home and tried to look at the case from different angles. Got tired, slept, ate, and thought again.

Six days later the effort finally paid off. The universe gave him a signal and he was vigilant enough to not miss it. Three blocks away, A girl named Curiosity lived on room 212 of building B. She came to meet her friend here, the neighbor of the kid. All her attention concentrated towards her phone, her heel pierced into the cat and she winced with pain before dying a painful death. Curiosity didn’t even try to save her. She was too scared to stay. After all, everyone knew this collar-strap with ‘Mayor’s property’ written all over it. She thought it was best to run away. But Johnny happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. And he got scarred by what he saw.

Over coffee, that evening, the team was being congratulated for having solved such a weirdly twisted case. At the first opportunity, Harry came to Bob and smiled. “Curiosity killed the cat at various levels. The girl killed the animal, mine killed my sense of rationality and patience, and yours killed the conventional way of thinking.” They both gave each other a long hard look, and broke out laughing.

No reason...

We’re always looking for reasons:

Reason to say what we feel.

Reason to do what we want.

Reason to spend time with someone we think we love.

Reason to join a college, or not do so.

We are doing that internship because we expect a certificate in the end. We’re playing that game of tennis to win, or to be fit, or to be able to add it to our resume as a ‘hobby’. We’re aiming at a big-shot company for the heavy paycheck and the fine dining.

We always want to be reasonable, and practical, and sensible.

Today I was walking towards the metro station thinking about the possible turns my life would take in the next few months- or years, when I was stopped on the sidewalk by voices; voices of a group of girls clad in their school uniforms. They came running to me. I was pulled out of my bubble of thought and I didn’t like it.

“Here” The youngest one presented me a little branch of flowers plucked from the roadside bush, followed by all others.

I was too shocked to react. “Thank you. “ I managed to utter and continued walking.

One step, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I turned around, traced the same path back to their spot.

“Why did you give this to me?” I couldn’t stop myself from wondering about the reason. “We study in that school across the road” The eldest of the lot said, pointing towards the other side of the road. “We give flowers to people while waiting for our bus here.” Chirped the younger one.  “Why do you do that?” I asked again.

“No reason. We have to wait anyway. This is fun.”

No reason.

And I couldn’t stop smiling like an idiot for the rest of the day.

 

Beautiful things happen is this world.

You know why? 

No reason.