The Picture

Looking at the picture on the wall the boy asked, "When did we go to the fair father? I don't remember anything.", his father who was standing behind him replied- "We did, last summer, don't you remember all the rides that we enjoyed?". The boy still perplexed and tired of trying to recall anything from the last summer, went into the backyard in the hope of taking his mind away from the seemingly familiar yet completely unknown picture. While the boy got lost in his games with his made-up characters in his made-up world where everything is possible, the father still stood in front of the picture, fixating on it. His eyes had depth unfathomable and in that dark abyss, those eyes seemed to have kept hidden something that he wanted to unsee for himself.

How they were so excited to go to that fair, that had funny clowns, so many different rides, storytellers, animals of all sorts trained to play in unison, weird looking people dancing all around, hawkers selling candies with every taste and of every color one could imagine, toys that compelled the children to play with them and everything that could make a child blissfully happy and even a grown-up escape the reality for a while, but to his despair there is nothing like that he could remember.

The sun was setting and it cast a reddish tinge on the clouds that had something mysterious about them. The birds flew back in a flock to their resting branches of huge trees to spend the dark night with insidious intentions. The whole scene became a canvas, so lifeless and still, not a movement to be noticed. The shrill silence made the father break away from his train of thoughts and reminded him that he is yet to prepare the supper. In a hurry, he went inside the kitchen and gave his son a loud call- "Get inside! It's too late to be out!". The son hurried towards inside and sat on the chair in a quick motion. The father who was in the kitchen seemed to be struggling with finding ingredients for the food. How could a man who lived the whole of his life in that house can't seem to remember what is where? The son who constantly kept calling his father for the supper had his voice slowly grow feeble with every tick of the clock. The father, exhausted of trying to live like a living being which he is not, came out of the kitchen with two cords and said to his son, "Here is your cord, and don't you fidget while you are being charged". He sat beside his son on another chair and looked at the two coffins in the backyard with sheer disdain, that are yet to be buried.