Life is Elsewhere

The lonely afternoon would draw me towards the window time and again. From the third floor of our apartment the view down and towards the horizon was dull and mundane. The apartment stood on the opposite side of a row of budget hotels. Children were very apprehensive about these hotels and the men who frequented them. There were lots of kidnap and rescue stories of children attributed to these hotels. These rumors were mainly planted by worrying parents who didn’t want us to venture out on to the main road. But back then the fear was real. Our building was surrounded mostly by shanties with red tile roofs, a common feature in the Calcuttan suburbs in the 70s & 80s. Adjacent to our apartment was a two storied building which incidentally belonged to one of my classmate. Their affluence was attributed to the white owl which had appeared on their terrace on a full moon day during the auspicious ‘Kartik Maas’. Today the Vidyadagar Setu takes a curve exactly at the point where this building stood.

Down there within the empty spaces between the shanties a few children were playing marbles. Towards the horizon a Double Decker bus was slowly laboring upwards the bridge running parallel to the tracks terminating at Howrah Station. The occasional crow would call out in an afternoon that had certain uneasiness about it. Papa and mama were both busy attending my younger brother who had been hospitalized because of meningitis. At the tender age of seven, I was the master of my daily activities except for that brief interlude when Raju, the office peon would come with lunch for the day.

I would often wonder at the fate that awaited my younger brother. Once I had asked dad whether he would be cremated or buried if he died at this juncture since he was too young. He didn’t answer. Once or twice in a month I was allowed to meet mom and my brother at the hospital. He was still in coma.

On that particular listless afternoon it suddenly occurred to me that everything around me was part of some story that I was dreaming and that real life was someplace else and in some different form to which I would wake up as soon as this dream gets over. The idea enamored me; it worked as a pressure release valve.

Decades later among the din and bustle of life as a businessman, professional, and parent the idea lurks somewhere in the deep recesses of my heart and comes to my rescue whenever things get difficult.

Call me a romantic, an escapist or anything else which defines it.

But even today life for me is elsewhere.