chapter 8

On windows

There are so many incidents in my life where I looked out through a window to see something which remain etched in my memory or someone looked at me through a window to remain in the same way glowing in my memory. To look through a window is a unique experience where the shape of the window will seem to restrict the view in that shape from a distance, but on closer inspection we will realize that it is the opening to the limitless world that lies beyond us beckoning us to get out and never ever get in…the world seen through a window is always a different outlook. There is something that prevents us from being with that which is outside the window, also that is the only way which shows what lies beyond.
Once I was sitting on a bus which was just leaving the bus stand and entering the main road. I was sitting in the side seat immediately in front of the door. I am talking about the private buses in Kerala. I had kept my hand on window sill of my window. I could see the colour of my sleeve through the corner of my eyes as I looked out. I was clouds and the sky… blue and white. I was in my ninth standard. It was in December and our school was celebrating Christmas that day…. The last day before Christmas holidays…
As the bus turned into the main road it had to slow down since some people had come up from the other side of the road to board the bus. The conductor who knew them as regular passangers, rang the bell and the bus stopped. I knew two of them very well. As they came walking towards the bus, one of them looked at me, I was already looking at him. He smiled at me, a soft smile, just a smile of recognition, or was it just that? I don’t know… I am not sure… I returned the smile, a happy smile...
My day that day was technically a very bad day coz I couldn’t find a dress to wear. Usually I wear uniform to school and hence there is no tension of what to wear… but that day was Christmas celelbration and we could wear colour dress. In the morning I had tried to wear a dress I really liked and had found that I was too large for it, I tried another one and found that the dress is too small for me…. In the same manner I had tried all the dress in my wardrobe and found out that I couldn’t fit into any of those. I think it would be useless to explain my distress, because it would be stating the obvious.
In the end I found a dress belonging to my sister which she had long abandoned since it was too big for her now. My sister is elder to me but is less than half my size. She had stopped wearing that salwar because a change in trend has made it necessary for her to wear dress that is tight fitting. But I could wear the salwar without breaking the latest trend, my sisters loose dress was tight fitting for me. That was the reason for my bad mood. I had to be satisfied with the old dress of my sister on that special day, when I had new dress in my wardrobe. But what fit me well yesterday wouldn’t suit me tomorrow. I would have become more fat.
What more is required to make me hate the day. And I had smiled a very happy smile at someone I knew, a smile that went out through the window and the smile that came in through the window. The smile was full and came straight from my heart. I had smiled that morning at someone with my full mind, little knowing that, that someone was going to change my life one day…years later…in ways I could never have fathomed. This is a dedication for that someone…

PS: and all these thoughts now because someone looked down from a window and saw me!!!