A Different Season

OK, so like many other stories, my story also starts with “It was a…”. It was a pleasant evening roofed by a red sky with a slight tinge of yellow. It was as if the sky was also enjoying the springtime. Young girls were running around the park gleefully, wearing light cotton frocks with an intricate design of flowers and white dots. It looked as if the colorful butterflies were dancing merrily, but only bigger and more beautiful. All the women of the town were wearing bright-colored kimonos, which they were trying to hold a bit above the floor length, so as to prevent their delicate robes from meeting the muddy lands. I would challenge you to spot even one person, who was not talking with someone. Yet, I wouldn’t call all this chatting an unpleasant noise, I would call this the jolliness of the citizens. It was as if the crickets had come to pay a visit to you with their good-to-hear sound.

I’m sure that the first thing you would imagine when thinking about the season of spring is the beautiful sight of beautiful flowers. The same case was to be experienced here too. There were flowers of various eye-catchy shades. To be honest, I never knew that some of these shades and colors existed as well. You could at an instance say that everybody was enjoying each and every sight of the spring season. I was so mesmerized by this view, that I couldn’t stop smiling for even a nanosecond.

No one could. But I could see one. She was really old. Her face was a crisscross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere. She was short and fat and slightly bent. She hobbled about the park in spotless white with one hand resting on her waist to balance her stoop and the other telling the beads of her rosary. Her silver locks were scattered untidily over her pale, puckered face, and her lips constantly moved in an inaudible prayer. Yes, she was beautiful. She was like the winter landscape in the mountains, an expanse of pure white serenity breathing peace and contentment. Seeing me stare at her, she also started doing her part of staring back. We had this 2-minute competition of this staring and glaring game. After a while of this craziness, I put a step forward, in both the game and on the dark green weaves of lawn.

I started walking towards her. She knew that I was coming, and so stayed still, not moving an inch. Finally, I was standing at a radius of about twenty centimeters from her. After a dead silence of a few minutes, I started the talk. I asked her the reason behind her sadness, that too on such a pleasant day. Meanwhile, everyone had formed a circle and had started to dance to some folk tunes, with one leg going here and the other one there. After the change in the music, the whole group assembled themselves in couple-dance, and were soon doing waltz. We were like the only people who were not a part of this dance. Some cats were also wagging and moving their tails in rhythm. I again asked the lady the same question and this time she opened her mouth.

What she did made me take one step back. She was balancing on only one leg. The other leg, here the left one, was out of sight. I asked her the reason behind this. She gave a different answer. She said that she loved to dance, and seeing everybody dance, she had this frown on her face. Her last wish was to see young people dance folk, which she couldn't do for a long time. On the other side of the lawn, people were now enjoying their purple-hued drinks, and were laughing so hard, that probably their jaws and stomach had started to hurt. I questioned the lady that why she didn’t get herself a good treatment from a good doctor from a good hospital for her not so good situation. She said she had no money. I knew this was coming, by looking at her scruffiness.

I had a solution. She would get her cure. I promised her that I would financially manage her treatment, and she should immediately book her appointment. I was expecting her to dance in joy. Probably not dance, at least some kind of emotion to show that she is extremely happy by my decision. This wasn’t her response. This time, she said that she had no time left. I wondered about the time and money and “the end” she was talking of. Now I had reached this state of confusion. I asked her. But she couldn’t answer it this time. She peacefully closed her eyes.

Even before I could suspect, her lips stopped moving and the rosary fell from her lifeless fingers. Her lifeless body fell down. Some of the flowers came flying and settled on her body. A peaceful pallor spread on her face and we knew that she was dead. Everyone had seen this and came running towards us. They lift her off the lawn, placed her on the benches near by and, as is customary, covered her with a red shroud. After a few hours of mourning, we left her alone. The council arranged her funeral, as they had known that she didn’t have anyone to relate with. Her funeral was done with only a few attending it, including me. Later we took the now-pale-body to the crematorium. The sun was setting and had lit her body with a blaze of golden light, as if the god was welcoming her to her after-life or something.

She was gone. The council figured out that she had osteosarcoma, a deadly disease, which first takes away your legs, and if it likes it, it might just take your whole life away. I was kind of interrogated by many people, as I was the last one to hear her, see her and feel her. Till date, every night, when I just lay on the bed, sleepless, I would see her face. In all this enjoyment, probably she wasn’t happy. Yet, I was happy that the last thing she saw was what she lived for-dance.

Probably spring wasn’t the same for all. Each and everybody faces a different season everyday s/he wakes up to life. By season, I mean situation.