Two big, innocent eyes had seen everything. Two big ears, sticking out of a relatively small head, had heard everything. And then, in a dewdrop instance, these sensory organs forgot. The little pieces of sudden, surprising events had been carefully stored away in a little dark corner, of a fresh pink brain.

I really mean to tell you a story. I can feel this story within me. It’s trying to push itself out of me, and it’s not finding the right vent. I really, really mean to tell you… It’s a rather desperate feeling. Look, I will try. It maybe coherent…it may not be. But please listen…because, I need to speak.

There was sun everywhere. Sun in the courtyard. Sun in the rooftop. Sun in the window. Sun in the hair, the eyes, the face. Sun through a hole. Sun smeared at the edges of a hole. A little spot of sun on my right shin. Like I said… it was everywhere.
Someone was sitting in the courtyard cutting his or her nails. Someone was hanging up wet clothes to dry. Someone was getting a mustard oil massage. Someone was reading the papers. Someone was having oranges. Everyone was doing something or the other.

I was playing in my room. I had a cold. It was winter, and I was wearing a muffler and a sweater and something else I don’t remember. I was playing with a broken tobacco pipe and a very thick pair of turtle-shell rimmed glasses. I was wearing the glasses and pretending to smoke the pipe. I was my grandfather.

My parents were in the other room, quarreling tremendously, like they always quarreled.
I was used to this constant bickering. It was my lullaby when I went to sleep. It was my alarm clock when I had to wake up in time for school.

Nothing was unusual or out of order. I was looking out of the window in my room and inspecting all the activities of the courtyard with grandfather-eyes.
And I felt the sun shine brightly, directly, into my big eyes, through the inch thick lenses of the glasses. Everything was blurred and wonderful. Someone was singing a song.

This is the very last memory I have of my childhood. I know this is not exactly a story…or even an anecdote. It’s the only thing I remember of those days, and I’m dying to tell someone.
I remember I used to draw a lot…even on the walls of our two storied bungalow. I remember singing while taking a bath in the dark mezzanine floored bathroom. I remember being forced to eat fish. I remember listening to the radio. I remember sleeping under a suffocating mosquito net. I remember the smell of school. I remember the smell of my blue raincoat. But all this was before the day I looked out of my window. After that, the only other thing I remember was a complicated math problem during a class IX exam. But that was ten years later. I remember nothing before.

Except…a strange pain. Not particularly painful. But an unfamiliar, unidentifiable pain. No balm, no medicine, no syrup could cure it. It was…is…this haunting, irritating niggle that, consumes my entire body. It comes and goes. It never completely disappears.
Anyway, that’s it. Now I feel much better. Can I go to my room now? 306. Ward no.306.