Paper Boats
As it started to drizzle, I hurried towards the terrace to
get the washings in. It was a typical mid-July afternoon, and the sky had
hidden behind the dark clouds. I climbed down the stairs with my arms around
the heap of clothes, piled them on the couch, and stood by the window. In no
time the drizzle metamorphosed into a heavy downpour. Within minutes, I could
see a large puddle coming to life on the nearby road. Oh how I wished to go
back in time!
“Stop running around or you’ll hurt yourselves”, my mother
used to shout at us. We had holidays during the monsoon. Whenever it rained, we
had a favourite pastime activity-sailing paper boats. We would normally remain
prepared all the time but on that day we only had as many as five of them. So
we hurried into my room and tore apart an old notebook. We folded as many
papers as we could into those tiny little boats. She was better than me at
making them-almost twice as much as fast.
“Will these be enough?” Anjali had asked. She was my best
childhood friend and my neighbour. As far as I can recollect, she had a small
scar on her chin and a missing front tooth. Her mother did her hair into
bunches. She could never pronounce my name correctly.
“Maybe”, I replied smiling at her.
We set off like sailors carrying those paper boats to search
for a puddle nearby. Upon finding one, we distributed the paper boats equally
among ourselves. One of us would go to the other end of the puddle and mark a
long stick as the finishing line. She always carried a yellow umbrella with
her, otherwise her mother wouldn’t allow her to go out in the rain.
The sound of raindrops have always been a perfect lullaby for
me. And sometimes they also stir up my vessel of bittersweet memories as it did
that time around. I opened my cupboard where I had kept my photo albums. One of
them had a photograph of us, smiling at the camera. I got it out of the album
and gave a pretty good gaze to it. Life is like a million photographs-you can
remember it but you can never recapture it. We were two 8 year olds in the
photo without a worry in the world, unaware about what future held for us.
I remember before we started the race, we wrote our names on
those paper boats. She didn’t have a very good handwriting. A-N-J-A-L-I. All
the letters would be of different sizes when she wrote them. We played the game
in rounds. We gently put our boats on the puddle, one for each round. We then
had a countdown 5 4 3 2 1 before we blew warm air from our mouths. The paper
boats sailed together under the soft drizzle for a while and came to a halt.
“See. Mine has drifted farther than yours”, she would say and
roll out her tongue at me. I smiled. I could easily outrun her in every single
round but seeing her happy when she won felt way better than winning myself. So
mostly I used to blow softly and let her win.
“Not again!” I would exclaim and clutch my hair.
“Don’t worry. We have plenty of rounds remaining”, she would
console me.
Our boats never made it to the finish line in a single blow.
Some of them would sink as they bumped over little mounds and rocks, and the raindrops
from the overcast heavens up there weakening their structure. The paper soaked the
water into its pores rendering the boats wet.
I put the photograph back into the album. I knew I was
smiling. I don’t know if she has one of these. I looked out through the window.
It had stopped raining outside. You can’t have a rainbow without a little rain
they say. But rainbows don’t just magically appear after every single rainfall.
Life is certainly not a fairy tale-sugarcoated with a cherry on the top.
After the game was over, we picked up the ones which made it
to the finish line after multiple blows. Most of the time, the water would have
already washed away our names on them. We also had an open drain in front of
our houses which connected our doorways. Anjali lived a couple of blocks away
from my house. She rushed to her home waiting for me to sail those paper boats.
I set them free and so did she. The current carried the fragile boats along with
them. Mine were a little heavier than hers. For I had loaded them with love.
Hope is like a paper
boat. Only currents of water and wind can keep them going. Else, they are just
going to sink sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time before they come across
their ultimate fate. Hope is a beautiful thing but not always.
She waved at me from her doorway. I smiled and waved back.
The paper boats were already on their way. Many sank half way through. A few
collided. I saw one coming towards me which had her name on it. I stooped over
it to pick it up but I missed it. My boats rarely reached her. Even when they
did, they were empty and light.
Anjali is one of my paper boats, drifted away from me. Her
parents moved when we were 10. I remember that day when she bade me goodbye for
the last time before she left. We had exchanged paper boats with our names on
them, which I lost after a few years. I haven’t seen her since then. I remember
her sometimes when it rains. All I am left with is one photograph of us and some
blurred childhood memories. I loved her back then. And maybe sometimes she
loved me too. I will never know. I kept the hope of seeing her again afloat
with just a few folds of paper for the next few months. Our love was meant to
drown because we sailed our hearts on paper boats.
As
