The Boy Who Lived In My House-I

Many years ago there was a little boy in my house, who was tall and skinny. There was a sparkle in his eyes, which looked at every thing with wonder. The falling droplets of rain, the distant lonely tree, the dirty mongrel shaking itself dry, to him every thing was wonderful. Everything was bright and new.

At every dawn he would rise from his bed, leaping into the morning with all the energy of the new-born sun. To him, every day-break was a new life; something was different from the one that passed. Every visitor was welcome into the home that he lived in; but none could enter the world of his dreams- the one that dwelled in his heart. He would laugh and play with them; but he knew all along that those who came always went away. Some came back later; some again and again; and some left never to return.

As bright and gay as his days were, his nights were dark and sad. The solitude set his day alight; only to return at night to torment him as loneliness. He dreaded the night as much as he loved the day. He was the son of the sun. And the moon hated him for that. It would tease him to no ends and every dream of the sunny afternoon turned into a nightmare.

His fears took human form and spoke to him all night, drowning in its noise, the lullabies that his mother sang and the bed-time stories that his father aspired to tell. The mother, the father and the brother he loved by day, seemed too far away to help in the night. Or so he thought.

The strangers, who he met in the day and played with, would return every night in his dreams to exact revenge. What harm he had done to them or why in the devil’s name would they hurt him, he could never discern. And yet every night, he would endure, for he knew that a lively morning was sure to follow.

Little did he know then that nature had a weird way with things, for he always thought that the fierce nights were always shorter than the days. As he grew, the days became shorter and the nights were getting a little darker and longer. Every morning he would tell himself, at least there is sunshine every morning and darker the night, the sun would shine brighter the next day. And so he started measuring the day and the night by the minute. He would observe every minute and compare it with the past and wonder about the one that would follow. He never noticed that he no longer saw the lonely tree or the street mongrel. They were not important to him any more. He did not see that he was changing. Till one day….
…. More to come