Chapter 1

Like a few of the interesting people I've met in my life, a constant desire of locking the breezy turns into words so that one day a book could be churned out, has often crossed my mind. Probably there were never enough breezy turns visible that could hold the writing; or probably there were never enough words to hold up the breezy turns. I could never really begin. Not that now I have both, but someone I know for quite a while now has made me deft in picking up the pieces of broken mirror and see a million things more than a single mirror could ever do. But the story doesn't begin with him.

May be it begins with a girl, 3 yrs. old travelling in a school bus somewhere in the 1990s West Delhi roads, having good knowledge of her stop, but not sure of it, she waits for the conductor who seemed more intelligent age-wise. He doesn't drop her at her stop, but a few stops later. She gets down, still knowing that it is the wrong stop, but has no courage to tell the conductor any better. The world, just a few streets away from the familiar looked so alien, it excited and terrified her at the same time. With a throbbing heart shaking her speech and her tiny frame, she shows her I-card to an absolute stranger expecting and asking him to drop her home. He does that, scolds the father for the sheer irresponsibility of the school. The father puts her into a new school the very next day.

May be, that wasn't the right beginning, it looked a bit lacking. It was not that huge an event, nothing damaging actually happened (I almost sounded as if I regretted that!). But the truth is, I could never forget that day. It led to an life-long distrust in my own memory and my fear of getting down at the wrong stop. 

May be, we should try something chronically misaligned. We could begin with her playing with a few street children in a garbage dump, it starts to rain, the lights go off. She starts to feel as if rain could cleanse her inside out. But even a child's mind is full of some secrets that can't be washed out by just the rain. The secrets that underlined her emotions, secrets that ranged from deep hatred to extreme passion, emotions that kids her age didn't have, or didn't show.