Short Story

This story is a fiction combined with facts and somewhere I am deeply related to it.

NATURE'S ADVICE

Ayna, with drawned mind and lost eyes, is sitting quiet in the last bench of the girl's row. She seems completely lost in her thoughts. The long ringing disperse bell startles her. Students are rushing out of the class, dashing upon one another. Ayna lazily picks up her bag and walks towards the ground where the college buses are parked. The left hand corner of the ground is covered with dense forest. She walks into the forest and makes herself seated on a rock. She waits there for her second trip bus which is to arrive in half an hour.

The sunny weather dramatically turns cloudy. In no seconds, the vast blue sky is covered wioth dark dense clouds. It thunders harshly, but the clouds now stay still, full of rain but denying to pour down any drop. She is sitting all alone in melancholy. The still environment drawns her into her past.

In her imagination, She visualizes a corpse of a two year old child, reduced to skin and bones, lying on the ground covered atop with a white sheet. There are remorsefully mourning people surrounding the child, all crying with grief. A middle aged man among the crowd comes forward and lifts up the child to his chest in a tight embrace, tears trickle down from his cheeks. He is the father of the deceased. Sitting beside him in deep silence is the child's mother, the only being with dry eyes. Her face is blank, displaying no emotions, no expressions. The child is being taken for cremation. the crowd of people is moving along. But there sits the mother motionless.

Ayna had grown up seeing her mother always lost in some thoughts. She had timelessly seen her laughing and crying with no reasons to explain her state of being. Ayna had never seen her sister who, if alive, would have been a year elder than her. But from her relatives and neighbours she learned that her mother switched to this condition from the time of her sister's death.

She really didn't realize her own misery untill she reached her adolescence period. Being a matured girl, a stage where a mother is the best friend and the greatest sympathizer for a girl, Ayna in all her neediness and for the slightest requirements had to approach straight away to her father. Not that her father was not kind enough or the least understanding, But her girlish requirements and emotions had always landed her in a state of humiliation. She used to grow jealous whenever she saw her friend's unspoken emotions easily grabbed by their mothers. She was a bright child. She had great ambitions. She was full of lovely dreams. But the one to pray for her dreams to come true was silent.

The shoutings of the children playing around brings her back to the present. Now in a standing position, wiping off her uninvited tears, she looks into her watch. Still ten minutes left. A sudden thundering attracts her attention towards the sky visible from a gap between the tall erect trees. She keeps staring motionless at the dense dark clouds, ready to burst out pouring. She realisingly notices a narrow streak of light hardly visible in the midst of the dark clouds. She suddenly feels the voice of her conscience speaking to her -
"See Ayna.See the dark clouds and recognize them.
They are the same darkness of your real life. They
are dense. They are complex, they are confusing.
They possibly try to hide all the light. But the ray
of hope finds its way out. Keep going. Don't stop.
Because for sure there is a way especially being
built for you. A way to happiness, a way to love,
a way to life."

The suddenly heard bus horn seemsto support the words of her conscience, testifying it to be true. Suddenly she wants to feel light, suddenly she wants to smile. Her tears are gone and now her eyes are shining with eternal happiness. She runs towards the bus, promising herself to build new dreams. Dreams of achieving joy, dreams of achieving in life, dreams of getting back the mother in her heart.

All the other students have boarded the bus. She is the last one to step in. As soon as she gets into the bus, it starts raining heavily. The clouds silent till now are singing in full bazz.

She reached home completely drenched, fully wet from head to toe. Her mother was standing in the veranda; lost in herself, as usual. Unwilling to spoil her own happiness, she overlooks her mother and goes in. There comes a jerk in her mother's expression. As if she has awaken from a deep long sleep. Very unusually her mother questions,"Why didn't you take the umbrella dear?"

Ayna is stunned to hear her mother. She begins to say something, but instead a loud sneeze breaks out. In deep worry, her mother runs up to her and with the end of her sari, starts pat drying her daughter's head.

"Oh dear! You might catch cold. I'll bring some hot coffee for you." The mother turns for the kitchen. Ayna pulls her back by hand. She is in extreme surprise. Her eyes start getting moist. She is standing statuefied, staring strangely at her mother. The mother can't understand the surprise in her daughter's face. Tears start pouring out of Ayna's eyes. She takes her mother into tight embrace and bursts out crying aloud. Perhaps, this is the outburst of her far hidden longings.

She slowly raises her face to keenly examine her newly found gift. Here in her attempt, she stands confused. Suddenly stopped crying, She is unable to figure out what all is going on. The gift she thought to have found is lost again. She trembles, her heart is again pounding in complaint. But she slowly recovers. She is beginning to realize something. It was a dream, just a dream, no reality. Yet, now she feels okey, her pains and complains are seemingly washed away by eternal understanding. She says to herself,
"Dreams are false. They are just an illusion. But don't stop seeing dreams, because you'll never know, someday they'll come true."