A thick layer of fog covers the sight. It reminds me of the cold winter morning when the sun is soft and birdsongs are amplified but nothing more. The fog seems to have covered the out of focus neighborhood. A little walk down the lane and few blurred figures appear on the scene. Children walking to school exhaling small clouds of smoke but nothing more. I follow the trail of footprints left behind, walking past blurred familiarity of the neighborhood. A playground, an intersection, a home with an iron gate, tintinnabulations of temple bells growing louder with every step, a morning hymn interrupted by a honking car, a paved footpath filled with crowd of morning walkers but nothing more. The fog has thickened over the years, spreading in the nook and corner of the out-of-focus neighborhood left behind on the time-lapse of life.
I continue to wander with a blurred vision, led by warmth of faint senses; echo of a lost voice -- a comforting tone, the lost touch of pat on the back, a presence that’s not there anymore but just a quaint lingering of these feelings, just like the fragmented embers rising from a bonfire of a burnt memory. A memory of a place -- once filled with the best days under the sun, when every season had a reason to celebrate. Simple things gave joy -- be it chasing a paper boat in the stormwater drain soon after the rains or sleeping over the roof of the house under starlit summer sky trying to identify patterns in which the stars were laid. An afternoon nap while listening to fables of distant lands from granny or be it a never-ending late evening chat with friends at the shore of a nearby lake. These fragments are the only remainder I carry with me today, just like some random pieces of a forgotten puzzle found randomly in a random box.
I try to close my eyes and wish upon my sleep to dream of the place; the front garden with the swing, the waft of appetizing smells rising from mother’s kitchen, the room on the first floor and the window in that room that was the gateway to the commotions of the world outside. However, I can’t dream anymore, there’s just this grey fog now and no matter how hard I try, all I see is the fog that pervades the nook and corner of the out-of-focus neighborhood, engulfing the past. No matter how hard I try, I can’t see beyond the silhouettes appearing and disappearing in layers of the distant fog. It seems I may have traveled far for long, as the past seems to be dissolving slowly and what remains is just a fading memory of a place called home.
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