THE BLUE SKY
“If you had seen the colors during the day, how could you think the sky is blue!!?"
I kicked the blankets aside as I got up, 'welcoming' the new day, another lovely morning. The sky is grey.
Grey.
Not BLUE.
I’ve to be at the Granson’s office at 10a.m and its already 8:30, and a grey sky. If it rains then it puts out my chances on public transport and my scooter, Dagg, had her tyre punctured yesterday evening. So yes, its not a BLUE sky. I check the weather forecast and book a cab, there is a 40- 60 probability, a risk fair enough.
As I go through my morning chores, I think about the things and how these things used to be. I think about my mother.
Shoaba Khan.
She had moved in here from the city and since then it has always been like she had wanted it to.
"Fuck stability, life is messy but in patterns, everything seems incongruous but I’m all set in. I had a 9 to 5, good paying job in the city, but all was so mundane, though it held security and my life - stability!
And THE SKY WAS ALWAYS BLUE!", she once told me.
The cab has arrived and I leave. The roads have lost a bit of their trust on friction, or maybe the rains deceived it out of them. In the sky, the sun is putting in efforts to come out into the vision but the clouds are stubborn enough.
The sky is stubborn.
Not blue.
Standing at the entrance of the Granson’s I analyze the building and the glitters and sparkles I was going to enter into. What made people think they always had to make an effort to build heaven on the earth, moreover what made them think the heaven had to be grand and all marbles and all sparkles!??
Why not grey?
I entered inside, the marbles, the blinding white.
The receptionist gave me the direction to the room where interview is to take place. I wait. After about 10 minutes I’m called in. Submitting my resume, I open the door, "May I come in?"
"Yes", the director replied.
He had decided to take the interviews himself.
I was asked certain questions to which I did reply satisfactory if not ravishing, since I was selected at the end of the day.
As I came out of the building, or marbles, the sun had succeeded in deceiving the clouds. I could feel the warmth on my face, the sun kissed. Drizzling had given in and the winds were traveling through fingers of my hand and drying my palm gently. The sky was orange.
Not blue.
I decided on strolling for some time to gawk at the soothing green that is left around and to let the wind feel me and vice versa. From tomorrow I’ll have to enter the marbles, the building I don’t love to do the work I love! The clouds are racing across the horizon as if among themselves to prove something that they think too SECRET for us petty humans to know. In the morning it was dark like a sea, now it is like a river that eludes the brackish taste as individual but ultimately aims to meet the 'Oceans’. The sky was dark as the Sea!
A girl is there across the road, her eyes at the dazzling lights displayed at the entrance of the party hall. Her eyes were sparkling in reflectance of the lights she was gazing at. She had a magnetic personality, at least I was the iron substance for her. I went close. She didn’t notice my presence.
The sky in her eyes was sparkles.
Not blue.
After few moments of my idly being there, she turned around and met my gaze. I smiled at her. She stared. I broached the discussion or rather a talk that was nothing like the rains in the morning, the grey sky or the peeping sun in the afternoon, the orange sky.
IT WAS BLUE.
"Hello",I said.
She stared.
"What is your name?"
"I don’t know",she replied.
I looked at her and noticed her, unlike before, I noticed her not just her splendid eyes. Her clothes ragged, her knee was red, blood, maybe the frictionless roads are to blame or the rains which make them devoid of friction to this extend. Her lips dry, her face famished. I looked at her a moment more than it was socially and psychologically appropriate. She didn’t let go, still held my gaze. Direct and piercing. I took out some money and a chocolate from my bag and offered her. The idea was to see and fill myself with the smile I thought the source to buy some food for herself and the cocoa would bring on her face. She just stood there and stared at me, the look in her eyes while looking into my eyes previously was blank and now was bewilderment as if I had crashed something ruthlessly that was supposed to be tenderly soothed.
"What?",she asked.
"For you",I said.
"Did I ask you for it?"
"I, I......",I couldn’t say more than that.
"Yes you what? You thought I am a vagabond or beggar and you being a earning person have a responsibility to offer me and make yourself feel as if a divine being? You offering me money and all who do you think I am?"
"I never meant to offend you, I just wanted you to have some food and maybe some of those sparkles I could see being reflected in your eyes. I wished to see the same sparkles being glittered in your smile", I said, adding a wide smile with a notion of making the situation smooth and the sky is heavy, rusty red.
I wish it were BLUE.
“I DON’T ACCEPT ANYTHING THAT ISN’T EARNED, THAT I DON’T DESERVE. I’m not just a mindless body that runs on the fuel of sympathy or someone’s wish to see the reflected sparkles, the glitter that isn’t even mine. I’m not someone who would live a second hand life dependent on mercy rather I live my life that I’ve created and however it is, the offered holds no place. I maybe a sin but I’m a deadly one, one that knows to earn and consume what its able to make, one that won’t accept your mercy just because I’m famished and ragged. I respect money but it holds no power to be able to make me bow down to it. I left my home when I was 9 because they fed me with guilt for my own existence, they taught me I was a girl and had to be someone’s, that I was not made to be an individual rather I had always to be serving other in the name of relation or social bonds and whatever shit that all is. I denied. I HAD TO WITNESS THE DIFFERENT COLOURS OF THE SKY AND THERE THE SKY WAS ALWAYS "BLUE"."
I looked at her. Moments passed.
I looked at her.
I looked at her.
"I want you to study", it sounded more like a command than a wish.
"Depends."
"Conditions?"
"Yes."
"Okay?"
"I would work for you and as a payment to the work you can finance my studies."
"But I can’t make you work for me, you’re a child, how can you....?"
"Alright then",she said turning around and started walking away.
A moment passed.
"Okay",a voice said that sounded like mine.
I could see the sparkles in her eyes and the glittery smile, both of which were HER, but she rarely expressed.
She joined me and we begin to walk together towards my home that will now be her too.
"So, your name?"
"I want you to name me, I’ve given up the previous one, it made me feel as if it too were a debt."she said.
"Sophia"
She smiled.
"Sophia means truth and wisdom", I told her.
There was silence.
“Thank you."
I thought she was gratifying for the education and others that I wasn't offering her since she was to earn it. I mean that is what she taught me right now, she made herself deserve it.
"I'm not doing favors and you know it.", I said.
"Thank you", she repeated," for the name."
I smiled.
"How does the sky look?"
"Spectacular and BLUE.", she said.
Her eyes never left mine.
THE SKY WAS BLUE.
