What do you see? BELLS!! Maybe it reminds you of Santa Claus, like it did to me. Dressed up in his red velvet uniform with the bells in left hand jingling jubilantly, while he drives through with his army of eight reindeers, smiling merrily.
But, for the lady sitting across the door in her wooden cane chair, eyes fixated over the screen that rests on the table right in front. For her, the bells are a messenger that gives her hope. Yes, HOPE!!
The bell rings imperceptibly. Her eyes that have sunk deep inside the face and the mind that had shrunk to the size of an airless ball, suddenly swells up, as though it had found a sudden influx of air.
Who might be there?
Her mind wandered. Perhaps an old friend, a visitor or merely a stranger who might have been enticed by the bells and would have stopped by to say “Hi”. Whoever might be there she does not care, she says to herself. But at the back of her head, she knows that the jingles she just heard has given her hope. Hope to get over her loneliness, Hope to get out of her own head, Hope to meet, touch or smell someone.
She hears the tinkles of the bells again, this time being more pronounced. She is unable to hold herself back and in the very next moment she stood tout as a strung bow. And as she stood up, the chairs that had gotten accustomed to the slow push suddenly felt this new rush. They haven’t had a chance of experiencing such an energy in a long while, so they chimed in as well and filled the room with the symphony, the one created with their romance with the coarse floor that had now developed a thin layer of dust over them.
She rushes towards the door, and as she finds herself just about to pull the clutch of the door down to welcome the guest. She stops!! Perhaps, trying to check herself. No, not her face or hair as she is least worried about them, but her emotions. She tries to take a long breath, perhaps to conceal the excitement that was now running vigorously through her veins. She takes a step back, curls her hair to one side and readjust her eyes to look as nonchalant as possible and then finally opens the door.
Before she decides to move her eye to give a first gaze to the visitor, she stops and takes a deep breath again. This time perhaps to register the smell of the visitor and check whether it taste’s familiar. And in between the moments, she finally moves her eyeballs towards the other end of the door.
Ah! The empty air is all that stands between her eyes and the possibility of kinship in her life. A storm of bewilderment passes over her, she immediately jumps out of her door and checks on both sides of the road to tick off the possibility of visitors fleeing away from her doorstep because of her delay in receiving them. With every passing gaze towards the receding road, she could now feel the weight of Earth falling over her shoulder. She is embarrassed of herself as she has always been.
In her thoughts, she is still expecting someone to show up. Maybe, this visitor is an old friend who might be fooling around with her, just the way she used to do with her friends when she was younger. Now a distant memory of the past, she tries to recall a part of her that no longer resided within her . A fleeting memory of her younger self, tweaked a sweet smile over her face.
A couple of minutes have gone by and now she is back at her door. Now, sitting on the dust covered floor with her back stretched over the wooden beat holding the door, while her head kneeled over her knees and eyes still fixated towards the passing road.
The wall clock that hangs on the other side of the room. The one you don’t usually find these days, with numbers displayed in roman numerals and the face so big that it makes the walls of the urban apartments feel small. She is old school, so it still hangs there and its ticking now fills the room and her head. With every passing second, the noise inside her head is getting louder and louder. She is unable to handle the noise anymore, so she immediately switches to cursing herself, the only art that she was now fluent at. In her head, she is punching herself as fiercely as possible for not showing up on the door at the very first sound of the bell. Why she had to fool herself to not let her emotions flow out, she questions herself. In her head she tries to recall how many times before she had questioned the same thing to herself. Before she could count back, tears started to flow out from her eyes.
Some more time had passed now, and she no longer cared. Even the tears had dried up, along with the meagre hope that was left behind. Now, her head was no longer kneeling over her knees, it felt like it was floating around in free air. Maybe, the tears had sucked out all the mass that it was beholding and a certain lightness was now making it float around.
Her eyes, which by now looked as dry as a desert were now staring at the cushioned chair which was resting just across the corridor. The chair seems to be talking to her now. Maybe, expressing its own grief, of missing out on the warmness of the human buttocks. Oh, how sorry she felt for the chair at that very moment, only wishing she could have felt some of it for herself as well.
The Bell Rings again!! And within a fraction of a second, all the life that had died within her, came rushing back. This time she moved her eyes, without giving any opportunity for the mind to speak in between. She had already promised to herself that she would not sigh away from expressing her emotions anymore, and thus she obliged to it. Only to find, no one around again!! Before her eyes could register the emptiness again, her hands moved towards her ears just to check whether her ears were at the place or it had also drifted along with her floating mind, and not yet returned back.
The bells rang again, but this time right infront of her eyes. Now, they were not merely ringing but swirling back and forth in full glory. And before she could have realised her hair that was resting on one side of her shoulder, started to dance all over her face. Her hair had now turned into an excited youth, and her face, A perfect dance floor. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. This time, just to breathe and feel the air that was now a part of her.
She felt more like herself, the self that she had left far behind and whatever had been gained and lost with time was all present drifting beyond her mortal body.