The Boy and his Mother

Even as the night disappeared amidst the rays of daylight,

The boy sat beside his mother, staring into her lifeless eyes.

The day had come yet the darkness hadn’t gone

He sat beside her in his despair and sighs;

Why does it all happen?

Why does man fall prey to this black hour?

No answers were given, no mysteries solved,

Why does one, so dearly loved, moves off so far?

Unlike the beauty of spring, the days of childhood never returns,

So is the human life, once when gone is gone forever.

In between the moments of dead silence, one could hear the heart crying, the soul tearing apart,

And feel the boy’s despair and shiver.

He reminisces the hour and the feeling of warmth,

All the world apart----- he wanted his mother.

He drew his face close to her eyes,

And the tears from his eyes couldn’t hold back further.

The insuppressible pain, the punishment for life,

The incompleteness of his small dream world with shattered hopes inside

The fragility of life and the shadowed eternal promises

Misled every other thought in his young mind,

Death has taken her away from me, so far, so far,

That even the distant cries will fade;

But beneath the crust of my human flesh,

There is a feeling that she will be there till the very end.

The two most difficult things in life for an individual to overcome are Fear and Letting go. It could be a dream, a belief, a loved one or even a habit. There is a terrible pain in not having to say goodbye at the right time. It stays in your heart and often gnaws its way into your soul at the first instance it gets. Whereas fear is the strongest adversary that one can have. It knows your weakness and it knows your  mind.
This is a story about a boy, a very ordinary boy who perhaps answered life's daunting questions in an extraordinary way.
Chap 1....The first look at freedom

The first look at freedom. When do we actually get a taste of our freedom. Coming from a upper middle class Indian family, our notion of freedom is usually restricted to our school lawns or our residential complexes. For Neel Mitra, it was his first cycle.

It was amazing to see how a pair of wheels had set everything in motion for little Neel. It gave him, his first feeling of Liberation and independence, his first moment of self accomplishment and glory and above all, his  first moment of freedom without rules and without adults.


I still remember the first time my father came home with this red colored Tobu cycle( that's what it was called in those days). It had a red colored seat with steel handles and a steel back rest. There were colorful plastic ribbons tied to the handles and black wheels with a tinge of grey in the middle. It wasn't exactly a super cool bike that kids nowadays ride but it sure had the looks to get my heart pounding, the moment I saw it. I was just 3 or 4 years old and i hadn't seen anything like that around me till then.

This bike had balancing wheels on both the sides which made sure that i didn't topple over but who really cared. It was the first chance to break free and ride away to glory, to cross the threshold that kept me and my aspirations within boundaries. It was the first possession i was truly proud of and cherished.

My cousin Rishi and me were the partners in crime in this new found freedom.