He sat upon his armchair, resting his feeble wrinkled hand full of calluses upon his bare chest, looking beyond the window, ruminating on what he has left behind and what's left with him, hidden from the world outside the dingy room in which he had exiled himself a decade ago when his wife died of apoplexy of the heart; the one woman who had truly loved him and cared for him for a score and a dozen years, selflessly devoted to him and undeterred by his appalling features and habits of smoking and drinking that haunt every man in his youth and cause discomfort to those around him, of whom his wife was one.
He looked back upon what he had accomplished as a musician adept in a stringed folk instrument that was no longer produced due to its declining popularity amongst the modern crowd who danced to film songs which played hip and happening music with trendy musical instruments that were played all over the country on the radio and television and personal computers, eclipsing his work of art and labor of love.
He still remembered the song he sang to woo his beloved wife before he entranced her in his love with undying promises of a happy, comfortable future in a palace with a hundred servants at her service and beautiful healthy children who would blossom with utmost care and warmth under them and would know not what is pain and poverty, that which was the nightmarish circumstances everyone else he knew was under.
He recollected the times when his friends used to take him along to trespass upon the forbidden premises of the landlord’s mangrove during the mango season to feast upon the ripe fruits harbored by the daunting old wrinkled trees that swayed to no breeze and proudly withstood all creatures of any caste, creed or kind only to be bowled over by angry storms whose rage cared for nobody whether meek or mighty and brought forth the grave dark clouds that blotted out the gay sun warming all that lay naked to him.
He looked at the sun that was setting in the horizon marked by dark outlines of trees that were nowhere in sight when he was a young boy of twelve and had first realized which is east and which is west after he was compelled by his headmaster to write the same in his slate board and repeat it for twenty times or more in front of his whole class, standing on his bench with his knees trembling and his ears warm and face blushing red, embarrassed to the core on being the only one who was picked for this punishment to be inflicted upon.
He raised his eyes up and looked at the children playing in the park below and thought of the times when he used to play with marbles that his dying father bought for him on his seventh birthday for four annas and how he used to have fun frolicking around rolling unused cycle tires with a stick, chasing around the round fat reddish brown hen with its chicks, with innocent glee unmatched in any other period of his life.
He recalled watching his aging father sitting on his armchair with his feeble wrinkled hand full of calluses rested upon his bare chest, looking beyond the window, ruminating on his past life and waiting for the moment he would think no more of what’s gone and what’s to come.
The future had arrived.
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