PART (i) :
You’re in your car on the street, tired after a very long day. The thought of home turns in to sighs of longing as you turn a corner and then another. The traffic ebbs to a stop in front of a stoplight. Red stares back at you, smirking as it relishes the inconvenience it is becoming. Your forefinger taps the wheel imaptiently; your foot is on the gas, ready to zoom out fast enough to turn the city ( alive as it is) around you in to a worthless blur. Lights flicker around your tired, lovely, lovely bones. You feel like your hard work will never be rewarded. Desperate to walk through the doors of your house and wash the the day off of you.
Ninety seconds. The digital clock counts down sluggishly. And then he comes. Leaning against my day old window is a boy. But that, sadly, is exactly what he isn’t. His flaky brown skin, bloody in some places and clinging to hollow ribs in others, is wrapped around his body like a cling sheet. His eyes are planets lost in their own unvierse of grief; black, wary and clouded with fear.His cracked bleeding lips parted to say one sentence.
Sixty seconds. And then one afraid, begging sentence
“Bajee? yeh Gulab ley lain; Khuda ka wasta haiy, meray ghar walay bhookay hein”
“Miss? please buy this rose. By God, my family is starving”
Forty seconds. He keeps mumbling, tapping on my window. Pushing one electric bloom of a red rose towards me, he bows his head in shame at having to beg. I stare at the filthy clumps of unruly black hair on his head, wet with blood and sweat. His kameez is ripped and grimy. The boy is young, young enough to not deserve such a fate.
Thirty seconds. “bajee?”, he squeaks.In that moment, I resent complaining about my work and fatigue. I feel guilty for even thinking that my life is pity worthy. I reach in to my bag for money and the boy looks relieved and very sad. He is paradoxical, I think, as he grins at me when I tell him to keep the change.
Fifteen seconds. Pocketing the hundered rupee note; he walks out of the traffic, dragging his feet behind him. I stare at the rose in my hand, its lovely spring scent spreading through my minivan like wildfire. Something tugs inside me. The roseboy watches me from the outside. From the calm waters outside the rapids. He raises another roses to me, in salutation.I lift my hand, in farewell, to the child.
Zero seconds. A car horn blares behind me and it is time for me to leave. The light is green and the rush of the rapids has begun again. Rushing for no reason, everyone speeds past me as I crawl out of the way. Letting thought of roses and black planets haunt me.
My house is empty and, for the first time, this does not relieve me. The rose resting on the sill in my most antique and favorite vase, is manically melancholy. Slightly wilted ,but its beauty is almost effervescent. I look at it and think, for the umpteenth time. And then I make a decision.
Paper Boats 