Six Days of a Beautiful Conversation by Deepika Srivastava

“Are you better now?”, I asked Soham. No, the question didn’t seem fair. Everything all around answered for him, out loud.

He had again twisted his arm, in a bid to pick up the glass on his own. As I started the usual round of physiotherapy, his face showed signs of relaxation, his eyes at the same time reflecting a heightened sense of desperation. At the age of six, when kids are meant to play, this boy struggled to pick up a glass on his own. He was helpless.

Done with the daily grind, when I turned to leave- he called out, “Di…”, and pointed towards the photo of the smiling kid kept on the table. He too wanted to smile.

That was bound to happen. I always told him that a smile would take away all his pain, pointing towards the happy kid in the photograph. It was a natural gesture, a natural thing to say when I would see him wincing at the sight of injections, medicines. He was a kid, after all, albeit in a different time; a kid who hardly ever spoke, hardly ever played.

I was baffled. I was brought down to the harsh reality, which I was trying to escape amid my chores.

“How can I make him smile, when I myself have forgotten?”

Wrapped tightly in woollens, my mind wandered to the earlier May- the May with the blazing sun. My dark self blended perfectly with the dark sky. Walking further, tears welled up in my eyes. In a fit, I fell on my knees and…..

“Why did they do this? For power, for money? This thirst for power, to conquer nature has brought us here. I too, will be soon buried under the sand with my parents, Soham’s legs and the parents of many others. How I wish nature had conquered me before it conquered my parents, how I wish I too was buried along with them…”

The flashes of that day, the apocalypse, the charred bodies of my parents and many others, their blood, had made me dizzy, and I just collapsed there. I woke up after a few hours only to my face and body swollen.