Wrapped in a White Cloth...

The whole place just blew up into a ball of fire...From this side of the creek, all I could do was to see them with my eyes wide open and missing every other beat of my heart...I just couldn't imagine that I was really witnessing a violent blast in my own neighborhood...I knew, any survivors was a hopeless thought...just could pray that there was nobody inside that warehouse...it was already 6 O' Clock in the evening and was naturally past office working hours...God, please, please please...let not any family be grieved by this mishap...

On my next instinct, and my years of training on first aid, brought in an urge to reach the accident site ASAP. I just hoped, IF I could be of any help...maybe the authorities would like some helping hands like mine...I rushed... How did I reach there, I don't know...but in a minute, I was there...I could see the charred remainings of a "warehouse"...practically nothing remained...the police, the water tanks, para medics, public etc was all around...I could see many people pushing against some police to find their way into this scene...I could see lots of new reporters...WHAT SHOULD I DO..WHAT WILL I DO...I just stood there...awe struck with the scene happening in front of me...

Suddenly one policeman approached me...He asked me, "Maa'm, could you please come with me. We might need some help from ladies."...I wondered, what sort of help...still as if in a trance, I walked behind him...My legs were shivering as I approached the entrance of the "once warehouse"...as I walked, I looked ahead..into the boundary of the burnt down remainings... I was shocked...I couldn't belive my eyes...among all those ashes was a cloth liner...still staying on air with its ends tied to the nails on the walls of the building...How come this didn't burn off...before I could finish my thoughts, something else just struck my heart...I saw hundreds of white clothes cleanly hanging on the clothe liners...not even one had caught fire...and with an ache in my heart, I realised those white clothes were those of babies...The white dresses that we make a baby wear at the hospitals on birth...I WAS SHATTERED... What I thought was a warehouse, was not one...It was a Baby Care Clinic...

Nothing crossed my senses...I just couldnt move...my heart started pumping blood into my brain in such a pressure, that I felt, I might collapse...with fear, my eyes looked all around the area....for what...I can't even say...But then I saw...many volunteers coming out of the place with something wrapped in their hands...It didn't take much time for me to realise, they were dead bodies...the burnt bodies of babies...not one or two...but hundreds...I wanted to run off from there...but I couldn't move...my legs were stuck to the ground...I cried... I screamed...I called out for help...I wanted to be out of that place...then and there...but none came to help...I just saw every single person walking past me with a baby wrapped in white clothe...all of them had tears in their eyes...but none spoke to me..none offered me a help...I couldn't bare to see the horrible scene in front of me anymore...My whole body was shaking...I closed my eyes and started pleading for help..I yelled and yelled...at the top of my voice...

Suddenly I felt somebody pulling me...I opened my eyes...I heard my mom's voice..."Wake up...you are already for the class"...I felt blank...What was that...Is this a dream...or what I saw earlier was a dream...with much relief, I confirmed it was a nightmare...just a nightmare...

JUST a NIGHTMARE...???? No...it wasn't JUST a nightmare for me...Because the pain in my heart persisted even after I woke from my sleep...my heart pumped hard for days...the feeling of the "something bad" ate my days...I couldn't think sense for days..the baby wrapped in white clothe came in front of my eyes for days bringing out tears in my eyes and making my heart beat faster than before...I had lost my peace of mind...I was suffering...just because of a nightmare... I wondered...HOW LONG WILL I GO FORWARD WITH THIS PAIN...I had no answer then...

But the pain had to stop one day...and it did...it was heart breaking, but still it cleared all the conufions in my mind...It answered all the worries given by that nightmare...The thought is still a pain...But still...I realised, Maybe the nightmare was an instinct...a sign...a sign preparing me for the future...

You must be wondering now..."what was that future...what did that nightmare prepare me for..." It prepared me to face a tragedy...to bear a pain..."The Pain of Death"...

Days after this dream...one day...I witnessed...

"My uncle carrying his newborn baby, who died on the second day of birth, to the grave...and the beautiful boy was all wrapped in a white cloth...."

My First Love Letter...

My first love letter...Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkk, I hate to even think of that,of all the people in the world, I got my first love letter from a stranger...The letter was ofcourse in ENGLISH...God, help meeeeeeeeee....the letter was the best proof that this boy knew not much of english and grammars and spellings...I doesn't remember the complete letter..but still, let me jot down what ever I remember of the letter...

Deer sweethart,

I want to tell you I love you. I wait 3 year tell you. I afraid. First I see you at the shop. I love you then. I come behind to your house that day. You not see me. I want know about you. So I made friend your neibor. He told all thing of you. 3 years I am behind you. You not know. I loved you like god.

when I see you, I sure God made you for me. 100% sure.your eyes beautiful. your smil beautiful. your face beautiful. no use make-up. I like nature beauty. I like you. Promise. I want marry you. .....

etc etc...and thus went on the whole letter... at times, I feel, reading that letter was the most difficult thing, I have ever done...if you guys didnt understand wht he meant..let me tell you..he meant, he first saw me at a shop before 3 years and from then he is loving me...he was always following me and I never noticed him...he even befriended my neighbour to know more about me and thats how he know everything about me...When he see me, he feels god had made me for him... and he likfe my smile,eyes, face...and also requesting me never to use make-up as he like natural beauty. and he want to marry me...

Goddd, help me...the letter made me crazy....if you had read the rest of the letter you would have really felt like trashing the author up...lol!!! What happened to that guy and his love...will write another day...

You might be wondering what I did with the letter...Nothing...I just tore off the letter and threw it into the air...uhmmm... But till date, I regret tearing the letter off...ATLEAST I COULD HAVE KEPT IT AS A MEMORIAL...and maybe could have shown it to my kids in the future to teach them how bad can grammatical errors be...lol!!!

Jogging...???? Noooooo, Never....!!!!

Are you a fitness freak??? Do you exercise or jog on a daily basis?...uhmm…I never been for regular jogging…just a month back, when I was sitting at home doing nothing (during my redundancy days)..suddenly I had this thought of staying fit…Enthusiastically I started jogging daily evening for 1 and ½ hrs… I felt healthy…and I decided, I would continue it always….heheh!!! Even my firm will power couldn’t take me forward too many days...Work, Eat, Sleep routine resumed its duty as soon as I was back at office…

Anyways, now to the real story…I was talking about jogging…this is something that happened a few years back…the years when I never needed any jogging to stay slim and fit…during those days, all of a sudden, my brother had this awakening thought of staying fit by jogging…maybe our neighbors, his friends motivated him to start jogging… not to put down weight (he had nothing to loose than some bones…lol)…What ever! one fine day he started jogging daily morning…of course accompanied by his friends…(Inside story: We used to make fun of him saying, he’s just going to the junction and sit there on the road side, sleep for 1 hr and then come back home…hehe!!! So bad right..???) Daily morning, he used to wake up at 0500am, put on his shoes and leave for the hard tenure of jogging (he used to sleep with tracksuits on, so that saves his time in the morning…waking up early was horror for all of us always...heheh!!!)

So one such day…due some reason, I was not getting proper sleep through out the night…I was having regular parades to the kitchen and scanned the refrigerator every half an hour to grab something or other to feed my mouth…lol, when I couldn’t sleep, I preferred spending my time by eating…anything like tomatoes, carrots, biscuits, chips etc…(a small incident during one such trips to the kitchen was…One night, by some 0200am, I walked to the kitchen to have some timepass…hehe!!! To my horror, I heard a sudden explosion breaking the night’s silence…Within seconds, I was back in my bed…lol, that night I had too much of imaginations of thieves, ghosts etc etc as the source of that loud sound…When I saw my mom cleaning the floor near the fridge the next day, I realized with shame, that what I heard the previous night was “A beer bottle breaking…it was kept there by one of our neighbor to make it cold quickly to serve at the wedding reception party at their house…” neither did he remember to take it back nor we knew about it…Anyways, once the bottle broke, the beer had the whole night to flow all around the floor of the room…Only if I had notified my mom regarding the sound the previous night, it would have saved her from cleaning the whole mess the next day morning…)

Now back to my story…so I wasn’t feeling sleepy and literally spend the whole night awake eating, reading books, walking around, watching the stars…etc etc…Soon it was somewhere around 5 O’ clock…I was still roaming around in the ground floor of my house when I heard the alarm go 'TTRRRRRINGGGGGG' in my brother’s room in the first floor. I decided to see him off and then go back to sleep…I waited near the stairs (ofcourse, without the lights on…)

I saw my brother walking down the stairs with closed eyes with his shoes in his right hand…Poor boy, he was still half asleep…I smiled...rather, I giggled…lol…Somehow, my brother who was walking down, hearing something, opened his eyes slowly….Ahaaaaaaa…(“did he hear me giggling..?”) What I heard next was a scream… “Aaaaaaaaaannngggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” and I saw my brother turning back and climbing or rather running all the steps up…

I wondered…WHAT THE HELL….I called out… "Brooo…What happened…”

He made a sudden halt…and in a jiffy came back in front of me and shouted… “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE AT THIS TIME OF THE DAY…and that too IN THIS HORRIBLE DRESS…” and he turned back and walked to his room saying (as if to no one) … “Uhhh!!!…walking around in the night to scare people…doesn’t want to sleep herself and then scaring people…above all, no other dress to wear…”…

Only then did I realize what happened after all… I was wearing a flowy white night gown…and with the street light shining into the room, all he saw was “Somebody standing there down at the steps in a white dress waiting for him with a laugh.” In a reflex moment, he took it for a ghost…lol…!!!!

I just broke into laughter…Till date, I never leave a chance to pull his leg on his courage and the way he ran, that night, screaming Aaaaaaaaaannngggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh …

Ofcourse, Who is going to remind him of the beer bottle…!!!

A Friend in a Stranger...

A very small phase of my life from the past, but…it was years later (rather too late) that I realized how big a part that phase was inmy life…The Phase of Love…yes, its true…Love, even if it is in the minutest form, would always be large enough to make an inerasable mark in ones life…

Those were days when the person who I thought was my best friend had broken my trust putting me in a dilemma with many questions… “Should we trust anybody ever…Are friends for real…” etc etc…I needed something to ward my mind off…THAT SOMETHING which I did for fun got me a stranger as friend…FRIEND?

A stranger for a friend..???uhm...Was I back to my self??? NOPE…this time I am not going to trust anybody…and let them take me for granted…I decided…”I am going to be rough and tough…If the so called friend ever try to break my trust, I would do that to him before he even think of doing it to me…”… Thus I was cautious…

From words to voice…that’s how we came to know each other…Our common interest, MUSIC… all that we discussed was music…we used to exchange lyrics of songs…favorite songs…we even used to sing out loud….lol!!! We enjoyed every moment of it…atleast I was enjoying…I was forgetting my pains…I was happy to have him as a friend…

Soon we both knew, that we were in love…both of us had learnt every bit of the other in the longest detail, and therefore, there was no fear of secrets...no fears of breaking the trust….but still there was one fear taunting me… “To love and get hurt” was the last thing I wanted…Some sixth sense said, YOU ARE GOING TO GET HURT… I was selfish…I was… I showed a new face…a face with no love…a face with no commitments…a face with nothing more than friendship…I shaped the whole thing into Infatuation…

With this infatuation, the uncertainty, the “so called friendship”….we met…with no commitments we spend long hours together…we were not sure of the future…but decided to cherish the present…we helped each other to forget our pasts…we stood by each other during many of those hard times…we cared for each other…together we warded off the loneliness we were feeling till then…each day, we loved each other (always hiding it in the mask of friendship) as if tomorrow would never come….

In his analysis, “he fell in love with me, not knowing that I could never love him…I was just concerned for him due to the friendship we shared…but still, he can never stop loving me… and he’s not expecting me to love him back…” I agreed to this analysis…When I smiled, he took it as ridiculing his feeling… When I kept quiet, he took it as I was offended…I agreed to all his assumptions…Bcoz, I knew that was the best for both of us… “Why burn yourself by jumping into fire, knowing it would hurt…”…I tried consoling myself…

Tomorrow brought out the harsh truth of life…we have to move apart…as always, even this we did together…we gave each other the courage…the advises…the strength…we parted ways…Even then, he blamed… “You are soo heartless…”..I smiled…because I knew, he never meant what he said…because he knew me…he knew both of our helplessness…Still we parted ways…with the promise of keeping our friendship always alive…He made another promise (even if he never said that, I knew it)… “He would never stop loving me…and would never care if I love him or not…His feelings for me would never change…”

Its years past now…as we promised, our friendship is still alive…we still give strength, courage, advises to each other…

What I still know is, “He still loves me a lot…and will never stop loving me…”

What he still doesn’t know is…, “How much have I cried on the nights when we walked the opposite direction…How hurt am I, even today, thinking of the day we parted...How hard I prayed for us to get the strength to go forward…How, I can never take him out my heart…ever…even if he still stays in my life as just a ‘so called friend’…How I can never disclose my love for this ‘Friend in a Stranger’….”