Back in the school, I used to sit at the extreme corner of the class room, away from the board but closer to the unopened windows. Sometimes, in the evening, however, I used to slowly unpin the windows, allowing the wind to gush in, part by part until everyone felt that it had been open since the very start.
It felt refreshing and to be honest, lighter as the air seeped in across the ears, through the bristles of my hair as well as the narrow spaces in between my glasses. I always thought to myself, how beautiful it would be if I could fly with the same wind, how beautiful it would be if the game of life was in the air outside than the black board in front. However, the reality isn’t a poof of air, it is heavy and extremely grounding. A couple of years later, I completed school and went for what was in front while forgetting all about the window behind.
It was the summer of 2017, I had been home for over a week after taking a sabbatical from the eternal lure of journalism. Ten years of being in the media industry, I decided it was enough. The lines of truth weren’t clear anymore, day in and day out, I felt lost as a person without a cause; a yellowed conscience of sorts was getting harder to ignore anymore. I kept fidgeting channels as I continued to watch uninterested when my six-year-old son walked towards me with a sheet of paper in his hand.
“Dad, do you know what happened in school today?”
I nodded as I pulled him over to my lap with my arms wrapped around him, my little Manav.
“Shantanu made this giant aeroplane and made it fly across the classroom”
“That’s nice, Manav”
“What nice, Dad! He didn’t let me play with it nor did he teach how to make. I had asked him so many times but he always refused”
“Oh! That’s why the paper”
Manav nodded with a small smile on his face, “Will you make one for me?”
“Yes, my cutiepie. Let’s make it together”
After a couple of folds and a careful replication by my little boy, we were ready with two bright pointy paper planes.
Manav pointed towards the window behind, the one opposite to the television. That window usually remained closed except once when we were fitting the air conditioning. The dust had accumulated at the corners while the cobwebs adored the glasses, however it didn’t seem to matter at that time as I paced myself towards it.
I don’t know why I went ahead and tried opening them when I could have just walked to the balcony. May be the little kid within me somehow came alive as I slowly unpinned the windows to ensure that it felt like that it was open right from the very start. We took our paper planes close to the window and set them loose as we looked on to find how far they fared. The television noises faded away as the setting sun and the rising breeze comforted my anxious heart. I knew it right then where I was heading next. Things became clear and life, a little more stable and endearing.
Next day, I dusted my old notepad and brought together an old microphone as I walked into the outside to do what really mattered.
Period.
rroopeshkumar 