Window of Life.

He was happy. Childishly happy. Slowly he made his way to the seat by his window. Glancing out, he saw kids playing. He could feel their happiness as if it were his own. He sat there for hours just watching them, their happiness and joy feeding his own. That's  how it was at the start. The window reflected his feelings. He saw  his feelings through his window. It never failed him. When sad he saw the blind beggar wailing the day away, when tired, he saw the poor labourers toiling hard in the sun, when old memories flooded his mind, he saw the young couple, deeply engrossed in a world of their own  

As the years passed, he became dependent on his window.. not only to reflect his feelings, but to actually give rise to them what he saw began influencing his thoughts.

Soon he learnt to see  just what he wanted to see. Now, when he needed to feel happiness all he had to do was to go to his window and selectively see the happiness around him.

It rose like a monstrous heartless ogre, threatening to wrench away his life, his very being. Within days it would be all be over. He knew not what to do. It was like death coming closer slowly, surely. He felt a suffocation begin to close upon him. He fervently chased through the blind alleys of his mind, for some way to avoid the inevitable. He thought of God, not as he did each day.. but with a heart rending plea of help, mingled with hope at first, then total desperation.

Each day he watched it, dreadfully, as it grew, higher  and higher, reaching up to him like  a mythical monster from whose talons there was no escape. He sat awake through the days and nights, throat dry and constricted, naked fear in his eyes, dreading the day it would be upon him, knowing it was just a matter of time, yet not able to reconcile himself to the  inevitable.

It was there. Casting a pall of gloom throughout his little room. Blocking the sunlight, the breeze, the world. His world seemed to be no more. The suffocation reached its peak. He was drained, The blood froze in his veins and could feel his life ebbing away and  could do nothing. Would do nothing. He cried out in anguish, beating his head on the sill of the very window which had kept his world alive. He fell to his knees, hands raised upwards, as if in a final hopeless plea to the Almighty, the Almighty who himself seemed so  helpless. He fell to the hard floor, not feeling the pain, not feeling anything. Nothing mattered anymore. His world remained no more.

It was only the next day that his housekeeper found him. Curled up on the floor at the feet of his window. Empty fists tightly  balled up as if holding onto something, not wanting  to let go. The labourers helped pick his frail body and load it into the ambulance. He was rushed to the hospital. The doctors announced him barely alive but completely comatose.

They dumped him on a stretcher, wondering how long he would be here, whether it would have been better had he been dead, and how much trouble it caused them all.  As the stretcher rolled into the ward, they thought they heard a meek frail voice say ” by the window..the bed by the window pleeeaase…..”

When nights are long…and friends are few…

I sit by my window… and think of you…

A silent whisper… a tiny tear….

With all my heart…I wish you were here.