Dawn

The morning was damp, fog obscured the outside. I sat at the window guessing what was flashing by… fields? Forests? Towns? I did not know. It did not matter, every second I was closer to home.

The wheels of the coach, were singing a lullaby, the rest of the coach was asleep. They were peasants, traveling back from the markets. Their clothes showed fewer patches than I expected, though the color had faded, and they were all different tinges of a dull grey, though, a few sarees, showed, brighter or darker stains. A print or stains I wondered. Tattered gunny bags cluttered the space beneath the berths. A few had spread out on their berths, but most of them were sitting up, sharing seats they had paid for, with strangers, for reasons that did not make sense to me.

Debater

“This is it,” she thought to herself. And not in that clichéd sports star movie way, but in a very real way, this was really it, it had taken her years of hard work to get where she was, sitting in the Library of her own school, but waiting not for a book, but for life. Years.

To everyone out there she was just one of 20 speakers that morning, speaking on the same boring topic that they would be bored of in under an hour of speeches. Those sitting there in the audience, they would look up at some speakers and snigger when they spoke, or made mistakes or forgot, they would applaud questions that left speakers wordless, confused, and defeated. They would, if grudgingly applaud those that spoke with brilliance, but for the most part, they would only applaud in a perfunctory, bored manner, as if attempting to get it over with, or at least get their part in the proceedings over with. She had sat in those audiences, and knew what the kids at the back would be doing, many would be reading comic books, others would be talking and passing chits, the better off would be tinkering with phones, and the most daring, the very stars of the batch, they, they would be leching at the girls. Even the less attractive ones would not be spared, and she knew she was one of them, the less attractive ones, but she also knew that she was immune to whatever they might say. She was above them, and would be, literally too, standing at the dais.

Rohan's Diwali

It was Diwali, and everyone was excited as always. Rohan was jumping out of his skin every time he heard a cracker going of in the distance. But he was waiting for the real fun to begin. In a little while his dad, Anil, would be back from work. Anil said he’d been promised some extra money as a gift for Diwali, and that the money would be spent on buying Rohan crackers.

Rohan was wondering what type of crackers they’d be. He hoped they would be lots of rockets; he liked Rockets, especially those with parachutes. Watching them come floating down slowly, with the burning candle against the dark sky was something he enjoyed a lot. He thought it looked like a shooting star. The city sky would never let him see a reale one, so he looked forward to cheap inaccurate imitation. Just like the rest of us. He knew they’d be a few Phul Jharis, he hated those, they were so pointless in his mind. What did you do with one of them anyway? Just wave it about stupidly in the air. The only thing they were good for is lighting other crackers, specially the bombs. He loved those; the double sound, ooni, and laxmi were his favourite. He hoped Baba would remember he wanted a chatai, at least one; even it was a small 100 ki Chatai.

His mind was already charting the course his chakris would take, spinning across the road; a few would perhaps slip into the drain along the road. No, he would not let that happen, he’d use a stick to knock them back towards the centre of the road. He wished he could kick them around like the big boys who burst their crackers down the street did, but Baba would not let him. Then there were the Christmas trees… and… perhaps a seven stars...?

It was getting dark the few stars the city sky showed were beginning to shine. Every now and then a rocket would fly up to join them, burst and disappear. Rohan felt like them, though he did not know why. He felt strangely like a rocket, being sent on one fatal mission, with a glorious, meaningless end, and nothing more. The frequency of explosions was increasing, and so was the loudness. People were beginning to get into the Diwali mood. A few houses had already turned on the lights that signalled their festive spirit. A few less festive, slightly smaller houses were lit with Diyas, and some down the street were still dark. Puja was still underway.

His mom had turned him out of the house while she prayed. He was sitting on the door step, his legs resting on the old rusty man-hole cover that spanned the drain outside their home.

He was waiting. But the sky had not yet turned black, his mother was still chanting, faintly audible in the pauses between blasts, and rockets were still only occasional. There was still time. Somewhere he heard a chatai going off. It was not a long one, perhaps just a 100… the good ones would only be used later. But suddenly being left out was too much for him.