Featured Author ~ SS 2018
Bijit has completed his Masters in English Literature from Delhi University. He has previously published two short stories in a motivational anthology, Hope Reborn and Down in the Dirt magazine. At present, he is working on a fictional narrative concerning the witch hunt incidents in lower Assam, India.
Winding through the Wildflowers
I know this will take some time before it reaches your door. Before it captures the footprints you put in the
soggy mud. It is time already, isn’t it? I am sorry it couldn’t have been much sooner. I just hope you pass by it
just this once. What was it again you told me?
That the ground lights up in your stead? That no matter how drenched you are, the imprints that you have
left behind will heal with time. It might seem heavy at first sight, but the water fills it up pretty soon. But the
muddy water would have been dried up by now. I wonder if the traces are still there, as you whisk ahead
with your arms flailing around.
The trails that you have left behind are not as subtle as you had hoped it would be. What was the sensation
you felt when you held your Dad close, as he rode the scooter round the sordid lanes of the city?
Was it a warm sensation bursting forth from your cheeks, while you kept a firm grasp around his waist?
A superhuman feat, I might say, as you levitate above the street pathways. You imagine yourself running
across the newly made roads up a few inches as he speeds through. You inch closer to the ground, hoping
to make the slightest mark. You shift your balance in the seat, as you inch closer to the left. Just a bit
more, you reassure yourself. All you need to hear is the grating sound as your foot runs parallel to the
tarred road. You could see your house from the distance. It has to be done right now. But just as it makes
the shrill sound, Dad loses his balance momentarily. The walk down from the garage wasn’t a pleasant one,
as you are handed down several warnings not to act out. Making the mark wasn’t as easy as you
had hoped. You have must have bottled those heartbreaking emotions by now. Healing yourself
has distanced you further from them, hasn’t it? It has come at the peril of the ones closest to you.
But it seems like you just made the wrong turn. Where is it indeed that you are heading towards? I hope you
are well aware that it leads towards a dead end. But I still can’t figure it out. Why do you still have
that unrestrained stride in your steps? Even if you were to retrace it all back, you would further deepen the
imprints you had made all this time, as it squelches deep beneath. How have you managed to keep
all that pain within all these years? The frightening mockeries and the judgemental eyes that have roved
around you ever since you have understood it all. In whatever ways you had managed to counter them
all with brief moments of shallow acknowledgement, you have to show me how. I just caught up to you.
I was right all along. There it was- the end to the road. The imprints are no longer there. Did you just give
up upon seeing it with your own eyes while you were you mending it all this while? The answers that I had
sought all this while fall on you. But there is no sign of you at all. The footprints have dug themselves halfway
at the edge, almost giving off the impression that you have taken flight. What lies next to it is a swampy
patch, overgrown with red stalks of wildflowers. There is nothing to see beyond that. I peer closely
at the last of your footprints. They seem to have shrunk on their own.
“Give it time”, you said to me once.
“It will heal on its own.”
Is that what you meant to say all along? Rather than waiting on it, choosing to let go for the moment while
not looking back would make your own self seem irrelevant, wouldn’t it?
Or is it all a matter of blind trust?
The torn stalk catches the corner of my eye. There was one wildflower missing amongst the bunch. Maybe
it hasn’t concluded just yet. I look for further signs in the unfettered wilderness. A few stalks had
been crushed just a bit farther.
I squint harder, hoping to catch a glimpse of you in the far distance. You have been long gone. The domestic
constraints was never supposed to hold you back, it seems.
The lingering marks of the path you had undertaken do take some time before they vanish. I presume it
would have been a matter of relative faith that you had left behind. I look back and there lay my steps
still out in the open. It might be quite some time before they fill on their own. Having seen the fate of it all,
I leave it all behind as I take my first step into the unknown.