A Writing Quill

She had been sitting unwaveringly for the last two hours now. Not a single drop of tear had rolled down her gentle and wrinkled face. The only words she repeated whenever someone would talk to her were, ‘Good for him. Who would look after him if he had been bedridden? I am too old now.’ He was 97, and still took care of his lady, who was in her 80s. She was sick and had aging, fragile bones. He was, though, sturdy enough to hold her hand and walk her inside the house; he had been her delicate buttress-weak physically but morally strong enough to support her. Even though he was sometimes sick, he had never stepped away from performing his domestic duties towards his better half, children, and grandchildren. She had been away at her daughter’s place for a few days after many years and could not talk to him for the last time. She regretted. But they had been together for 65 years, and now they needed no words to communicate; they just knew each other’s thoughts, and so life went on. ...

  The sun was shining bright. The sultry afternoon made Bajender think of his worth on this earth. He was sitting under the tree seeking the cool breeze. But not a single leaf moved, making the place hotter than before. His wife, Sunita, shouted from inside, ‘sunte ho! Pani to bharo .’ The Gram Panchayat had recently arranged for the supply of clean drinking water in the village. As the election approached, they had expedited some delayed works to secure the majority vote by the ruling ‘Sarpanch’. This happens every five years. After the results are out, the Panchayat committee hibernates for nearly 3 years and then resumes the leftover work of the last 3-4 years. Not a single toe moved from him. He was lost. Worldly visuals found him there, but his mind had been oscillating between the past and the future. He time-traveled with the mission of rectifying some mistakes of the past that would change his present and so would reshape his future. His three children were hopping and ju...