The Little Senses

                                                                

     Its body was red and black, mostly. The front silvery grill gleamed in the dark. The crane in white looked fascinating in contrast to the black body from which it rose. It must be a very good toy to have. Sleeping with it must be bringing good dreams at night, he thought. It was the toy a kid would instantly crave for. And Ayaan’s eyes, too, could not get off it.  After all, he was only a seven year old kid.

    

     Soft, little brown rail of hair on his forehead, tipped over his clear, emerald eyes. The eyes did do justice with the sanctity of his name. Ayaan loved being at Shayan’s home, where all the good toys of the world were packed in. Ayaan also had toys, but they were just toys. They came but never got pinned to his heart. This little toy-truck got pinned to his heart. Love at the first sight.   

     And it was also fitting in his tiny hands. He was happy. But he couldn’t hold it forever. It was not his after all. It was Shayan’s, his cousin. Ayaan could play with it as long as they were in Shayan’s house but he could not bring it to his pillow, where all dreams are born. With this thought of the lonely night without that toy, he lifted the truck and rotated its wheels furiously. Furiously, so that they break. If they can’t be his, he didn’t want them to be someone else’s. He slapped and they rolled. He slapped hard and they rolled more. Slap, slap. Zoosh, zoosh. But they did not come out. He, then, put it on the floor and gave it a hard push. It hit the leg of the bed and turned upside down. Not a single piece came out. All intact. Shayan came running inside the room when he heard the sound. He saw the overturned truck and smiled. “It is very strong, Ayaan. It won’t break. Don’t worry!”, he said with the smile protruding more by then. What Ayaan had his face in response, was the hardest smile he had ever put on his face. Shayan made the truck upright and pushed back in direction of Ayaan. He saw it coming towards him. He asked Shayan to get some other toy and put this truck away. “I don’t like its red,” he said, “it shines a lot” and he let the truck go under the bed which continued with its sturdy linear motion. He tried to forget the toy, saving his consciousness from the omnipresent thought of it. Shayan went around looking for something not so red, not so shiny.

     

     “Ayaan, Ayaan”, his mother called for him from the living room below. He went down to see his mother. They were leaving for their home. So it was time to do the pranam to the elders. After that, he told his mother that he is going upstairs to say goodbye to Shayan, too. He dragged himself to Shayan’s room, for his room would remind him of that shiny red, but Shayan was not there. He could listen to Shayan’s mumbling coming from the bathroom inside. He turned to go back. But the red shone in his mind. Furiously. He hesitated. He also had quite many toys. Moreover, if he’d ask his father, he might also gift him one like this. But before anything else could drive his mind, he bent and looked underneath the bed. The gleaming silver was there. He stretched his hand and stretched little more and then finally got the grip. He quickly pulled it out. Shayan was still inside. He tip-toed out of his room and then rushed downstairs. He stood near the entrance. The elders were still having the last round of talks, probably.  He found the chatter utter waste of time. Their smiles and jest did not amuse him, as very little he understood. On other days, he would have smiled on almost everything, otherwise. But the truck in his little pocket, today, made his lips quite tight. Eventually, when he saw the elders approaching the gate, he opened it himself and stood outside. He wanted to leave this place. At least his pocket should be out of their vision as soon as possible. The elders were not very supportive in that attempt of his! It was all on his shoulders! When the elders came out, he went and stood near the car. Then, the final of all the good byes were floated and his mother and father joined him in the car. He put his hands on the pocket. It was there. His lips relaxed and a smile appeared on them. His father startled the sleeping engine. It resisted under the effect of tenuous cold but roared ultimately and then rolled the wheels. Slap, slap. Zoosh, zoosh.

    

     He went straight to his room. Behind the ajar door he felt safe. It was his, now. All of its red, black, silver and white. He could run with it. Clutch it tightly in his little palms. The silver of the grills could shine in his eyes for hours now. And, importantly, he was sure of getting good dreams, too. As beside his pillow will lay this toy-truck. He switched off the light and slipped into his bed. Those little stars, stuck on the ceiling, shone the green. He remembered that these were part of the surprise his parents had for his birthday three months ago. They still used to amaze him. There were so many, of different sizes. Was there one less today? He didn’t bother. There were enough. He glided into the quilt, snuggling the toy in between his arm and torso. And waited for the dreams to come. Good dreams.

     

     And the door opened before him. He looked above and there stood his father. And then came the palm, gushing down and fell on his cheek. The cheek grew red. The soft cheek grew dark red. And crisscrossing lines of the fingers lay over that red. The eyes grew stone-like and stunned. The truck fell from his hands.   

     

     He woke up. This was a dream, he knew at once. But, were the dreams supposed to be like this now? He checked the truck. Yes, it was there. Still, then? His hopes were beginning to get betrayed. It might be that the toys are meant only to be played- It mustn’t be true, then, that they ought to bring the good dreams, he thought. But the fear of being caught has already crept in him. Or was it just coincidence? He got off the bed and opened the lid of the bed. He peeked into it and pulled the iron out. He, then, went to the adjacent room, and stood near his mother’s side. “Ma,” he whispered, “Ma”. When Avani opened her eyes slightly, she saw what she had slowly got accustomed to with the passing years. Ayaan, without his pyajama, in the middle of the night. She knew that he himself felt quite bad when he wetted the bed and that is why, she always smiled when he came like this. “Not to worry, Ayaan”, she tried to console him, “it is getting cold, naa, that is why it must have happened”. Then quickly got him another set of clothes to put on and took the iron out of his hand. “We will dry that tomorrow, okay. Come, sleep with your Mumma”. He had seen her mother drying the mattress with iron often in winters, and last two nights too were not much different, since it takes too much time and trouble to get that mattress out of the bed every other day in the sun and let it dry on its own. So her mother often resorted to this method of ironing out the mattress dry. He tried to resume his sleep again. This time, in a much more warm and comfortable surroundings of his mother’s arms and lot noisier one as the snores kept poking out of his father’s nose.

     

     He was introduced to two new feelings lately. One was that the merriment out of the toys vanishes when you have no one to share and play with. Another, that he had stolen something and he might get caught. Yes, definitely, his parents never got this toy for him. And he was not yet big enough to get it for himself. So if he got seen with this toy, he shall be interrogated, in the lighter version though, but that would be enough for the truth to emerge from the depths of his soul, which was yet to learn the ways of concealing, if not lying at least. The former was not that problematic. It just taught him some lesson and he could bear that. But the latter could hurt him more. And, quite literally. And then came the palm, gushing down and fell on his cheek. He had seen it, too.

     

     He played with that toy, therefore, only when he knew no one was there at home or when it was sure that no one would come to his room. But those times were few. Soon, it was confirmed that it is not fun when you can’t play with someone, even if the toy is very good. The silver doesn’t beam much then. The glow of the red fades just as those stars up at his ceiling lose the greenish glow slowly through the night. And hence, another unsaid promise, after the dreams one, of the toy began to wither.

                                                                                * *

     

     He looked at his father standing at the counter of the paan shop across the road. It always amused him how does everyone know everyone at the paan shop. The two persons standing at the shop can never stand without having a talk of some sort. And his father, too, couldn’t save himself of this enigma, he thought. His father looked towards him, and pointed to little, colorful jars kept at the counter. It was their personal code that whether he wanted his quota of goodies- the Melody-ies. He shook his head and his father got the message. He beamed when his father passed the pouch containing the goodies to him in the backseat as if this is how he bought things. This was the currency children use. He took two and gave the remaining to his mother for her to keep in the glove-box of the car. He threw the wrapper and rolled the window quickly. The chilling waves shivered his spine in few seconds. The winter was in its prime now. It was just coming in at the time they were at Shayan’s place last time. One month later now, it is full-blown. Soon, they were in the herd of the cars. The burning of the rubber and little warmth of the headlights must be in good taste for the black of the roads in this winter, unlike what people see. Only the cars above the rubber, and frantic people behind the lights.

     

     Had Shayan come to know about his toy-truck? Did he ever bend to find out his red truck? Then, not finding it there did he think that it was lost or just that his mother only kept it somewhere else which he didn’t care to ask or was it that someone stole it? Did Ayaan steal it? Ayaan shuddered. Now he felt the fright a thief would have felt when he stole things. But there was no hint, no call whatever since then from Shayan or his parents regarding this. Whatever calls came, they were just the regular one in which he didn’t participate much. Those talks were uttered by the elders and listened by the elders and kept amongst the elders, more often than not. And since his parents haven’t taken him under any sort of investigation yet, he was safe and this he had already calculated before coming along with Avani and Rajeev.

     

     Ayaan looked at the light flickering at the tip of the long TV tower. The same red light flickered on top of the ambulances, police vans, he realized. Why were they all red? Before he could ask his mother about this, another red enveloped his little brain. Not flickering, a stable red.

     

     They had been waiting for so long, claimed Shayan’s father, the birthday man. Shayan chirped in, “There is gulab jamun and ice-cream, too!”. And they all expressed the right proportion of mirth for the sneak-peek into the dessert leaked to them by him. For some time, they all sat together in the living room then the ladies set off for their workplace, the kitchen. The kids were still not finished with their rum cakes. “Shayan, won’t you show your mathematics copy to Bade Papa?”, reminded Shayan’s mother from the kitchen to Shayan. “Bhaiya, he got geero mein geero”, she joked.  And they all laughed again, and Shayan felt the sweet embarrassment. Ayaan couldn’t get the joke. He looked at his father in anticipation, but the explanation came from Rajat, his uncle. “Ayaan, your brother, when he was in prep class, he got his first ten on ten. He couldn’t decipher the score and its significance. So when he came home, he told his mother with a long face, ‘Ma, I got geero mein geero’”. Ayaan got the innocent joke and the beautiful smile took its place on his lips, firmly.

    

     “Ten….nine….eight…seven…six…five, four, three, two, one, I am coming,” shouted Ayaan from the lobby near the entrance. He had convinced Shayan to play hide and seek today, instead of him drooling over the ever appealing toys Shayan had in his closet. Shayan was hiding up, inside the store room, which was a little dreadful for Ayaan for him to go alone there. What if Shayan wasn’t there? Anyone could be there in that little, dark, almost uninhabited place. So, he kept lurking around in the ground floor, looking upwards often. He then decided to go upstairs, after all there was no place left in this level of the house where Shayan could hide. Slowly, he propped himself against the door and looked inside. No one was there. He went in to look in detail. A loud shriek startled him, almost a minor heart upset. And then a quite known cry ensued. Everybody ran towards the sound to find where did Shayan bump himself into. But since the cry got louder and troubling, the hurrying elders became grave.

      

     The bump was first a little extrusion, then was slowly en route becoming a mound. No blood, though. So it calmed the elders and Ayaan, too, after all he only convinced Shayan to play hide and seek today. Shailja was rubbing Shayan’s head profusely whenever Rajat removed the ice-pack for a second. Avani and Rajeev kept consoling Shayan, as Ayaan stood with the glass of water.

     

     Few minutes later, he was lying on sofa in the living room with his head on Shailja’s lap. She was rubbing Thrombophob on the mound. “Papa, give me the car keys. Let me get Melody for Shayan. It would make him feel good”, apportioned Ayaan. A little hesitant Rajeev granted the keys to the concerned Ayaan.

    

   Again, the red, shiny toy enshrouded in Ayaan’s pocket, crossed the boundary. But this time to be restored to its kingdom. To its playground, to its owner. To absolve him of the yet unpublicized sin of his. He first went to Shayan’s room and hid it amongst the gang of the toys. The red, immediately, began to shine. And the silver gleamed, too. He hoped that, bed-wetting would resume its original low frequency, even if it turns ice-cold. He pushed the box in, closed the closet and chuted downstairs to the living room.

    

     “I got them for you only, just forgot it, but anyway you took the fall to remind me of it. See, there are six left. Can I have one? You can have all the rest. It is only for you”, averred Ayaan and passed the pouch to Shayan. He took it, opened the pouch, looked into it and closed it back. “Thank you, Ayaan”, said Shayan with a smile, to return for the gesture. He then sat up, propped himself up against the backrest of the sofa with his mother besides him. The left toe was bruised and the foot still bore the little reds here and there of the brick that struck it when he was about to run towards Ayaan but instead got his head hit the railing of the foyer, between his room and the store, which overlooked the dining area below.

     

     “Mumma, can we have the gulab-jamun and ice cream, now?” researched Shayan, looking at his mother, and then the eyes sought Ayaan and rested on him, tender smile lying somewhere beneath them.