MIDNIGHT MUSINGS

When my mother told me 9 years ago that I would be going to a boarding school, I was excited out of my mind. One of my biggest expectations was to have a lot of midnight feasts in the dark. St Claire's, the series by Enid Blyton had greatly influenced my images of boarding schools and today, food is usually an important part of my favourite memories.
Bringing food into school was one of those rules that nearly everybody broke. My friends and I were no different. When dinner ended at 7:30, I was usually already thinking about the sweet treats waiting back in our cupboards, hidden behind me pile of uniforms.
At night, our matron would walk around to check if everybody was in their beds, switch the lights off and go down to her own room. Her door banging shut was like an alarm that set off all the "illegal" things that happened in the dark. People got up from their beds and went straight to their hangout spots. Like rats that come out in the night, everybody goes straight to the source of food - that one friend whose turn it was to share.
There were usually six kinds of people in these social gatherings. The paranoid one who hits the panic button with the slightest of sounds. The practical one that is usually the fastest when the matron really comes up for her surprise checks. The foodie who cannot wait when it comes to munching, usually the first one there, last one to leave and the noisiest when it comes to opening food packets. The accountant usually keeps a tab on our stock of food and has an approximate idea of how much we can eat a day so as to let our food last the longest. The head chef who comes up with the craziest (but most delicious) combinations out of the most random things and lastly the bad ass who is the least afraid and claims to have the courage to offer food to our  matron if she does catch us.
Midnight feasts were put on a really high pedestal. It was that one time of the day that a lot of us waited for. Friendships were made and broken over it. A sacred routine.

WHITE RECTANGLES OF HAPPINESS

In an era  of social media and the Internet, I still hold the joy of receiving a letter, very close to my heart. An adrenaline rush that was cultivated when I spent day after day, for months following my matron around my dormitory  waiting for her to call out my name as she handed out a bunch of white envelopes with a few bent corners and a handwritten address. My mum was the sweetest, writing me a letter as often as she could. 
Then came the concept of emails. Spending a very precious few minutes of my "computer lab" class every week to write a considerably long message with a list of things that happened over the week and an even longer list of all things I wanted my mother to send me via courier. The number of emails rose and the number of letters fell but I still waited around for that occasional letter.
I grew accustomed to not hearing my own name called out but the small pile of letters and parcels still brought me just as much joy. I stopped following my matron around as much but I waited and watched as she distributed the letters to equally excited girls. For me, it was an art that I truly appreciated. An art that was lost to most of the world and yet important to me.
Even now, living in the same house as my mother and having no need to wait for letters, I  still run to our postbox looking for any mail.  Our little metal box in our apartments basement where the only envelopes to be found are usually bills or bank statements. But I still run and have a peek. Happiness rushes through my veins as I wriggle my stubby fingers into the narrow slit of the box, struggling to pull out that lone white envelope. Something about those white envelopes make me so happy. My mother probably thinks I'm crazy and I may actually be, but I love my little post box in the dingy, dark corner of my basement.

AN UNFOLDING

The huge bathtub, filled with water and foam, reminded her of Dumbledore’s Pensive. As she approached the tub, she remembered how Harry had felt fear and nervousness as he approached it. The only difference was that she was not nervous, just happy and calm. Maansi stepped into the warm foamy water. For a few seconds, there was only clear water around her shins and then the foamy water came floating back, in an attempt to regain their previous state of calm. Then on realizing that there was an obstruction, it climbed upwards, creating a tiny strip of bubbles on her shin, just above the water level. For the next minute, the bubbles on the water were in complete unrest as Maansi slid her body slowly and fully into the water. Another minute and her whole body was blanketed with popping bubbles. 

As she palmed a little bit of the foam and blew it off her hands, she thought of a picture that she had found earlier. It was dated 15th of September and was a picture of her as a baby. She was 12 days old, and her mum was carrying her in one hand. The baby’s body was partially immersed in water, surrounded with soap bubbles, just like she was now. Apparently she had always enjoyed water because her baby self seemed to be smiling just like she was now. Maansi realized that she had a lot of such photographs. She made a mental note to buy a photo album and save all the pictures. She shook her head as she thought of the fact that photo albums were such an old school thing in this age of digitization. Yet nothing could beat the pure joy of turning a page f the album and laughing at the memories.

A big bubble that popped in the bathtub brought Maansi back to the present. She took the eucalyptus soap and began to slowly rub her arms. The smell brought back memories. Her school in the Nilgiris had a huge campus that was abundant with eucalyptus trees. So, many years at the school had made the smell of eucalyptus almost a symbol of home to her. It brought a smile to her face as she realized that she actually missed school. So many people that made her feel like she belonged. So many memories that words could not describe and time could not erase. The trees, the air, sky and the earth, all in perfect unison. Nothing could take away the joy it brought her when she thought of school. 

The smell of the soap, the warm water and the gush of memories sent her into a spiral of happiness. The water began clearing up and she could see more of her self under it. It was time. She got out of her tub, wiped herself and then put on her clothes. She was going to stay home so she wore an old black T – Shirt and shorts. Cream was lathered, hair was combed and a mug of hot coffee was made. 

She had a lot of work to do. Well she couldn't really call it work because she loved it. She was a content writer for an online magazine. She wrote a lot about food and restaurants and every experience was better than the previous one. Just recently, she was sent on an assignment to try a Lebanese restaurant. The freshness in their food was a taste to remember. She had taken her time to taste and relish the food and now articles had to be written and deadlines had to be met. She hoped that one day, maybe in another ten years or so, she would become the Editor of the same magazine or maybe start one of her own. That was her dream. She typed into her laptop and smiled. It was the smile that dreams brought about. The smile of hope.

A LITTLE THING

Sweat ran down his cheek. The shooting pain in his leg, a constant reminder of the situation he was in. The footsteps echoed in the dark alley as he ran further into the dark abyss. As the echoes grew louder, he ran faster and the cycle of pain, loss of breath and tears continued. The pain reminded him of his tennis playing days. He used to play a good deal of tennis as a child and continued to play all through high school. Throughout the first few months of the coaching and matches, his thighs and calves would burn with the work-out. He now remembered how his mum would always say, "Honey..think happy thoughts...it 

" Happy thoughts", Roger thought, "Think happy thoughts".

He began to think of all the good memories he had. The first memory that brought a smile to his face was the memory of the first time he met Claire. It was in the library. The air was filled with the most wondrous smell of old leather-back books and old ink. He was looking for the Oxford edition of a collection of Edgar Allen Poe's poems. As his fingers fan across the spines of various books, they met long thin fingers, eagerly in search of a particular leather-spine collection of literature as well. He remembered how the fingers didn't pull away like he expected. His eyes ran up the sleek arm, up her sleeves, her long neck and landed on her face. It was the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Her hair curved her cheek bones in the most perfect way. The light from a nearby window made the skin on her cheeks glisten like a clear pebble in the sun. He knew immediately that the woman in front of him would change his life forever. There were no bells or starlit sky, no electricity in his veins and no rain trickling down his face but there was intuition and that, he felt, was so much stronger.

From then on...what started of as a conversation over coffee about William Wordsworth and John Keats....unraveled into a wedding and two kids. He could still feel the adrenaline rush of wedding bells, the warm air with a hint of saltiness from the sea side wedding location in Hawaii. the sun was setting and their was a cool breeze that made the ribbons in the venue flutter. He could see Claire walking down the aisle wearing a beautiful satin off-shoulder white gown and carrying a bouquet of roses. she looked like an angel from above. It was one of the most happiest moments of his life.

The only memory that was equally sweet and happy was the day his twins Lara and Keisha were born. They had wanted to keep the gender a surprise and on the day of her delivery...he was worried and nervous. He knew of deliveries gone wrong and he prayed that his wife wouldn't be a victim too. it was a long delivery but all the anxiety disappeared when the nurse came out with two babies wrapped in a pink towel and said, " Mr. Carter, congratulations. The are both girls."

He had hopes. Lots of hopes. He hoped he would have the opportunity to play bad cop to his daughters boyfriends. He hoped to see both his daughter graduate. He hoped to walk them down the aisle at their weddings. He hoped to hold his grand children in his arms. By then, he hoped, maybe Claire and him could move from the city that they lived in to the suburbs. They could have a small cottage with a garden. He had pictured Claire's bent, old frail body overlooking a rose or vegetable patch while he whistled to the tunes of the Beatles. Hopes. That's all they were. Mere hopes that had now disappeared with all his other plans for the future.

Roger's smile turned into a frown as he kissed his future goodbye. The more he thought about the one little mistake he had done, he realized how much he was going to loose. For starters, he had a family, a house, parents who loved him to the moon and back and friends who he could trust. He even had a great job. Sure, it costed him late nights but it paid really well. But then it was those same long nights that was the start of the events that led to his destruction. Maybe, things would have been different if he could come home early every evening, in time to see his children and wife off to bed. Was it all his fault or could you blame her too. Maybe it was partially his fault. He couldn’t help the long nights. His boss, Mr. Thatcher always had something for him to do. The boss was another jerk. How could he look Roger in the eye every single day after all that he had done? How cruel could he be. He deserved what he got. Mr. Thatcher's mistake was assuming that Claire would never tell him. Thatcher depended solely on the fact that she would rather dance to his tunes than ruin their marriage. But he was wrong. She had preferred to tell him when things got bad rather than hide it all. In that split second of anger, he tripped over a rock and fell head long onto the gravel.

The footsteps grew louder and louder. Somebody pressed his back down and he felt the muzzle of a gun on the back of his neck. "Please God, protect my children and leave them in safe hands. And please forgive me for everything I have done." Roger thought.

A deep gruff voice said, " Roger Carter, you are under arrest for the murder of Peter Thatcher. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and may be used against you..."

"Oh Thatcher...you deserved every bit of what you got. If you hadn't slept with my wife and then been a dirty pervert and taken pictures to blackmail her with, you would have still been alive. May your filthy soul rot in hell."