Life has a number of unaccounted moments of misery and it is only right if we leave them unaccounted. So I will try to refrain from all the sad moments of this story unless I absolutely have to use it as a reference or something else. So here goes…

“Those silhouettes of the mountains still haunt me, if I was ever alive in my entire life it was on those lanes, twisting and turning into unknown bends. Any moment can be your last and yet gives you more hope than ever. It was the first time ever that I saw myself clearly, my reflection in the window next to my seat in the ever so dark night bus but somehow the moonlight lit the entire valley, the roads and the mountain tops. Occasionally I saw lights on top of mountains that had no signs of life and although I am very weak at heart but those ghostly lights were igniting spirituality in me. We need to have few humbling experiences in our life to really understand our place in this world.

I dozed off a few times on the 13hr journey only to open my eyes to a more stunning sight than the last. I am travelling to Gangotri to deposit my mother’s ashes into the holy river. I am a single parent child and so this is a huge loss to me. My mother was everything to me that said, I also have a confession to make. I have killed my mother…”

And I closed my laptop again after making some really tall promises. Killed her mother??It’s so dark that I cannot handle it! I have been stuck for a long time now, to be exact it has been two years and I have not written anything worthwhile. I am suffering from writer’s block and to be honest, my life has not been too kind towards me to give me the opportunities that can make me come out of it.

So I am a thirty four year old teacher who is not strong enough to face her own problems and thus has landed into deeper holes. Let me give you some background over here, I am a delusional woman who did everything by her choice and ended up in pain. How? Read on…

I was born in a family that could provide for my every need; never had a reason to cry but in reality I cried a lot! I was good at everything except for one thing, Ends. This is the reason I struggle as a writer, I cannot write ends.

All through my life if there was ever a book or a movie that I loved I would read its end as soon as I found it interesting then would resume the book from where I had first left it, this way as soon I knew that the next page would lead me to the end I would stop reading it. This fear made me controlling and manipulative to the point that I don’t plunge into anything which I cannot predict; it is so bad that I don’t experiment with anything. I didn’t know the reason to this stupid fear for a long time but then around the age of fourteen, it all cleared up and I got to know the reason as well as the solution to my problem. You see I have always been cranky but the reason for being sad was actually different. Very different.

Sixteen years earlier, I was Fourteen and sad as I earlier mentioned. That summer something extremely unusual and almost alien happened to me.

I saw a dream for seven recurring nights. One week, the very same dream, it wasn’t a good dream and I always woke up in the middle of the night cursing only to see the dream again the next day.

Strangely though I would sleep again to experience the same feelings-excitement, desperation and an infuriating frustration which left me extremely perturbed.

It was beautiful in a strange manner. I will be filling up the gaps wherever I deem it necessary and make the dream sound more like a story otherwise it will be all over and you won’t understand a word. I can still see it as if it was a movie whenever I close my eyes…

It was a hot afternoon, hot enough for me to see each drop of my sweat fall down to the ground and vanish within seconds. To that point into the dream that was all I was able to see, I don’t know how the dream began but this is the part that I remember seeing every day. So I saw my sweat drops fall down as I fixed a miniature Ferris wheel. Somebody calls a name, “Dastakhat!” I look towards the person, it’s my name. He says authoritatively, “Will you finish setting up before the people arrive? You just have to tighten few screws then you can take your lazy *** into the tent and lay down again. I wish I was young enough to do it all myself…Now stop gawking and finish this fast!” he turned and went away slowly. Thank God few things never change; whether it is a dream or my real life I always have someone replace my parents in reminding me how lazy I am. I turn to work and in a flash it’s done, this is why I love dreams, things move at a fast pace and you skip the boring parts and enjoy only the best parts. And immediately it was dusk, I was walking past the other vendors and their stalls. I saw myself in a mirror shop and realized that for the first time in life God was kind to me even if it was in a dream, I looked the kind of guy I would plead on my knees to go out with me, also in an attempt to give my ego a boost: This is my fourteen year old mind, now I look damn good! There might be some statements that have little relation to the reality, kindly ignore them. So, I was a 5’11 curly haired lean brown man, with golden brown eyes and a small mouth with beard growing all around it making it look even small. My hair was a shade of deep brown which looked closer to black. It was almost as if my maker fell in love with brown when he was making me.

There was still some time for the fair to start so I roamed around trying to nick some food while the stalls were being stocked for the evening. Suddenly I am next to Ferris wheel; I am letting people sit on their seats while another boy helps me by operating the machinery. I sat down to collect money and allow people in for the next ride. I don’t know exactly but it seemed that it was the last lap and then I could eat and sleep. It had been a long day full of travelling and hard work and we were going to stay five more days till we shift to the next village so I needed to sleep well in order to regain my strength and mental sanity. Right now I was sleep deprived and tired to the point that I could thrash anybody who would even argue with me. Thank god nobody was haggling about the increased price; it seems that the people of this village had seen a Ferris wheel for the first time.

“This is day light robbery; it is two times the price I paid in chitrapur!” I had collected near about the target and I did not need this kind of a customer now so I turned my attention from the wheel to the counter, “Look miss, if you don’t want to pay the amount you are welcome to lea…”

“Sabina let’s just pay, I know you can come again but my ammi won’t let me go out tomorrow, please!!!” Saying so one of the two ladies gave me money. I kept it in and watched them go inside.

Do you know the smell and the humidity one experiences when the very first velvety drops of rain touch parched ground which has been tortured by the summer sun for months together; OR the feeling that you are incapable of using your own body and mind and like the world around you has been frozen so that only you can breathe? NO? Ok how do I explain to you the one feeling that you get only when you come in contact with the missing part of your heart. You feel complete but with immensely dense feeling of happiness, hyperactivity and insanity, all at the very same instance of time. You feel the need to run through oceans and swim through the clouds, jump into fire and catch hold of every single living soul and tell them that you have found your match. That you are in love… I was in love. With Sabina.

Quite small in stature compared to me perhaps eight inches smaller, dark brown eyes lined with kohl, a softly defined nose, flower petals for lips and long black hair covering the forehead to an enchanting face, she promised to drive me crazy. I needed this woman in my arms, on my lips and in my life as soon as possible!

What was more amazing than my love was that she had not broken our eye contact ever since I turned towards her, she was on the wheel and each time her face was visible to me, I could see a faint smile and a look of stealth on her face. Of course, she was a thief and yes the next line is exactly as you have imagined, so I will not say it lest you exclaim “cheesy!!”