Around the corner

I turned around the corner and stopped. I wasn’t sure if I should walk on. Up ahead of me was an entire new world, the open air, the vast blue sky and umpteen opportunities. I would no longer be what I used to be. I would be a new man with a new life. There would be no more of those lonely nights after coming home from office, waiting for the phone to ring, smoking endless cigarettes, and waiting for someone to remember that I exist. She was far too carefree. I had made up my mind. This can’t carry on. I did the right thing by taking leave of her. I walked on with a false air of having finally gained something.

A yellow cab honked its horn as it went past me.

Yellow. What a beautiful color; it rises in the horizon with the sun and swarms around me in waves of nostalgia like butterflies from the past. It flows past me with the silken breeze caressing my weary thoughts.

She loves the song “Yellow” by Coldplay.

It was way past nine in the morning. I walked on past the colony park. There were not many people there. An old man was sitting on the park bench reading a newspaper. Sitting beside him was an old woman, probably his wife. They made a warm couple. They saw me and smiled. I forced myself to grin and I walked on. The image of me grinning came to my mind.

“Remember the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland?” , she had once said. “You look exactly like him when you grin. You are my silly Cheshire cat”.

I dug my hands deeper into my coat pocket. It wasn’t cold outside. But I wasn’t warm enough on the inside. My hand clasped onto something cold. I took it out. It was a metal pendant my sister had gifted me. She is now married and happy. It had been a long time since I had last seen her. The pendant was cold and had been forgotten. Everything left alone grows cold and is eventually forgotten. And so will this memory that I have of her.

Like the peal of a thousand bells that reverberate in the perfumed air within divine halls, her laughter would ring in the distant darkness bringing warmth to every corner of my aching heart.

I had to get away. I was torn into shreds by my agony, bitterness and regret. I started running.

She is very used to getting pampered. She is like a child who would rub her eyes with both her fists clenched, early in the morning and you have to lift her off from the bed to make her get up. She likes dancing in secret to Frank Sinatra songs and cries every time she watches “An affair to remember”. She is a kid. She is my baby.

She needs me.

I stopped. I turned around and I ran.

A fresh roar of joy resounded within me. I was happy. I didn’t know why. But I was happy.

I ran and I ran till I reached the place I was before. I stopped. I was breathless and my head was blank.

I turned around the corner.

There was nobody there.