Map and Crayon
“Childhood Map”
He slightly opened the cracked wooden door of the cubby attic. A sharp hand of a triangle light thudded dumpily into the corner of a wooden chair. The dust looked extremely hurried when he walked in. He moved toward a long cupboard. He opened it. He got some baffling pigeons on his head. Their flapping wings callously hit his head and face. He gave a quaking shout, “What the f...!”
The shelf rack was filled with guano and dust. He was chocked. Then he groped for something in his pocket. In that gloominess, the spiders saw that he unfolded his handkerchief and placed that creaseless piece of white cloth on a leaden chair. He and his satin handkerchief looked anachronistic in that ancient dinky room. He bent a bit toward the cupboard’s lower rack and pulled out a big cardboard. Some crayons rolled down on that dreary mosaic floor. That board looked like a world map. He moved his palm on that. The time striped off mercilessly, as if he could see a boy and an old man stepping up to the attic room.
“Did you bring that?” A chubby little boy clung to his grandfather’s arm.
“Say...” he asked that in a high-pitched note.
“Ohh... yes... let me sit Captain.”
His grandfather sat on a ‘mora’ (cane stool) and gave him ‘the largest world map of the town’. His grandfather ordered that from a local stationary shop.
He jumped twice with the map and then carefully marked the places with his favourite white crayon. He said, “Tintin, you’ll go here, I know.”
“Dadu (grandfather), I’ll also go with Tintin.”
He shouted hard and his grandfather gave him a pat with loud laughter. His grandfather wrote 2002 on the top of the map and calmly said, “When you’ll be a big boy, you’ll love this.”
They kept that map in their new treasure cupboard. They promised that they would sail soon to Egypt to be a part of Tintin’s team. They were collecting items to look like the proper ‘captain grandchild’ and his ‘sailor grandfather’.
“Dadu, next time, a compass...”
The voice was fading.
That night, he and his parents left for his father’s office trip to Manali. He waved at his grandparents with a blubbing face. On the next day, something happened to their hometown. All day, his father was constantly talking on the hotel’s landline. At night, when his parents were assured that he was asleep, they turned on the television. But he could hear sobbing-whispering. He saw the mute television through the linen lining of the blanket cover. The news anchor looked extremely distressed. Then the screen showed some rambling moves; some people looked helpless; then it showed some squads of patrolling policemen. His father gave that dumb television a little volume. The host said, “The city is burning. Our correspondent showed some reddish marks on the roads...”
He stammered, “The officials are still unable to say the number of deaths...”
The phone rang again. The room was silent for some seconds. Then his father was weeping like a child and murmured, “Abba...Amma...”
On the next foggy dawn, their car took eerily sharp turns in those valleys. His father changed his car in the middle; and he and his mother went straight to his maternal uncles’ home. Nobody gave him any answer.
“Why they were silent...why they couldn’t go with his father...why they couldn’t go back to home... why he couldn’t call his Dadu.” He asked each hour.
After some days, his father came back with some packed bags and visas. He never saw his grandparents again. They never went back to their ‘favorite’ white desert. That day, he once tried to ask his mother, but then he felt he perhaps knew; as if something were strolling away.
His eyes were itching. “Your captain is here Dadu.”
He wiped his eyes with his arms. He felt like sitting there. But then he suddenly messaged his driver, “Get the car.”
He hurriedly stepped down. He put that map on the back seat and slipped those dusty crayons into his leather bag. He looked at their cracked nameplate from the closed car window. This time, he would be doing the official work.