Sapno ke ghar ki...Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I was a little girl, back then. I climbed down from the train into this new world where I knew no one. My parents had died in a car crash 2 weeks ago and my aunt and uncle brought me to their home in ooty. Through the eyes of this 8 year old, ooty was a quaint town with very quaint people. Nobody spoke a thing. It was quiet and gloomy. People kept to themselves. Maybe, it was just my perception. I had not cried a tear since the police came to my house that day. I learnt to keep to myself, cursing God for every moment of my life. As time passed, I became indifferent. To God and all his beings.

I spent most of my time gazing out of my window that overlooked a play ground. I was not staring at the children or the swings on the play ground, I was staring at nothingness. Space. Empty space. There was a bench right in front of the park, on the road. Sometimes, when I looked out from the window, I would see an old man sitting on the bench. And before long, I was back to nothingness. It wasn’t that my new family was not caring and understanding. Somebody had moved my cheese and left me searching. Like every other child, I went to school. Did math and science and English. And moral science. Somehow my teacher at school seemed to think that God was fair. I was perpetually perplexed but I never explained my confusion to her. She wouldn’t understand. What does she know?

One day, as I religiously perused my daily ritual of gazing outside my window sill, I heard a very sweet voice. It seemed like a lullaby. The old man on the bench was humming a tune. Something in that voice made me walk towards him. I sat down on the bench next to him but did not say a word. The stranger smiled. He began humming again, this time with a smile on his face. I sat there for a while and then went back to my room. A few days later, the old man appeared again. This time it was a different tune but his voice had the same melancholy in his voice. It seemed like he was yearning for something. Or was it just me again? I came out and sat with him on the bench, yet again. We did not speak a word. He sang, I listened. With each passing day, I gathered a little more courage to sit a little more closer to him. Many months hence, I was about ½ the bench length away.

Then one day, he sang “sa…”. He waited. He sang “sa…”. I looked at him and he sang “sa..” again. In a rather weak voice, I responded with my “sa..”. He continued, “re…”. At that moment, I realized it did not feel awkward to sing on road, with him. This time, it was a much stronger “re..” from me. The old man’s eyes seems to gleam very brightly as he moved on to “ga..ma..pa..dha…ne…sa..”. And that’s how I began filling my world with music.

Chapter 2 to follow shortly