A train has a poor memory. It goes from one destination to another without remembering anything, without needing to remember anything. Life flashed through when I looked through the window of my coach. The train was leaving behind everything, the trees, the lakes, the memories, the pain, the anguish, the laughter, the cry. I was in deep thought when I heard a sound, the familiar sound of my mother. She came and offered me the food. We were going westward this time, leaving my hometown, the memories and our ancestral home behind forever.
Every time I came back to the town, my memory used to jog through everything and everyone. I would walk around the neighborhood and the park and remember the days when I and Sandra used to play together. She was naive, always smiling and had a voice like a bird. She was my only friend. We talked for hours and hours, played in the park every evening. Our moms chatted during that time. We would run around the swinging swings, the clanking metal ropes. Few other kids played around the giant shoe shape slide in the park. A hawker screamed down his throat to sell food items. We would go by him, but rarely bought anything. The bond we had built over the years was stronger than the forts we built. The scent of roses and tuberoses in the park would spread in the evening. On some days, I would collect tuberoses and offer them to Sandra, rarely she denied them. Then I would dance smiling. The summer sky was divine, spreading its color generously all over the world. It brought people together, brought them out of their houses. Sandra would use tuberoses and weave them with the memories in a garland.
Years and years later when I returned to my hometown, I noticed the changes. The park was busy, the roads were jammed, the neighborhood was cramped with tall buildings, the traffic had polluted the air, people were suffocating, barely surviving. I wandered around the park, got lost in the ocean of people. In all those faces, eyes tried hard, very hard to find that familiar face of Sandra. It was lost. However, I tried, it was hard to not remember those moments. For a moment it felt that she walked through the crowd and ran towards me. I had grown up, bones had changed, body had changed. Life taught me lessons, experiences, and reality. My imagination at that moment ran wild through the places, the trees, the slide, the forts, everything we had done together. The reality was starkly contrasting. The car horns, the screaming hawkers, the jangling swings. For a moment, I shut my ears with my hands. That noise, that eerie noise was too much to take. My head was cramping. I sat down on the bench, trying to recover from a memory that had haunted me.
Sun was setting, the tower clock chimed for six o’clock. The same image, that same image flickered through the crowd towards me. I didn’t know if it was real but felt like it was. I stood there and her four ft. figure pushed through the crowd, one step at a time.
It is real, it isn’t real. It is real, it isn’t real.
I was different, but she hadn’t grown up at all, still the same hairstyle, still the same walk. I didn’t know death kept one young forever.
In all that hoopla, another flash through of that fateful day, when I didn’t see her, it killed me inside. Mom brought me home from school. She left the house without telling anything. When she returned, I looked at her desolated face. Her mood, her face told a story without saying anything. The world was without one person. I wasn’t told anything; I didn’t know about death. Mom stopped going back to the park, I stopped playing outside.
Every time, I asked “Mom, can we go to the park?”.
The only answer I was told was “Another day”.
Another day never came as if the Sun had stopped rising, people had stopped moving. I never found out what happened. Those memories continued to haunt me years later.
The crowd had gathered. The same faces, so many faces, it was hard to find that familiar face. Tomorrow I will be back, taking a train westward. And yesterday’s memories would sear through my heart since I had forgotten that face, that play with Sandra. The dust settled on the pavement as it knew its destiny. That face had disappeared among people, so many people. The crowd was different every moment as if all these people had found one and only spot, the park. I started to walk back, dejected, looking downwards. I turned around in the hope to hear the voice, the screaming of my name. But that never happened. The evening slowly faded into the night, I stood there, waiting for a bus. People continued to pass around me.
When my bus arrived, my feet were slow to get in. I got on the bus and I looked through the window towards the park, for one last time. Something had happened, people had gathered at a spot, the same spot where I saw Sandra last time. And slowly a figure rose through the crowd and walked towards me, ran towards me. The bus moved, and moved fast, fading that image slowly, slowly.