By Aalam Singh Batth
(2 am, September 2024, in a wore-down, gloomy and crowded Pune Airport, Old Terminal)
(Air conditioning is not working properly, only a few lights on the false-ceiling are functioning.)
(Sitting near the gate, in one of the seats is a mother, half awake and half asleep, and her child, fully awake, probably never asleep.)
At the airport gate it’s getting late, she’s waiting for the plane to reach the gate. Her child’s moving around, throwing tissue papers at the ground. Active and running around in the glee of youth, her child’s moving runs without any care in the world. But she’s got all of the world’s worries on her head, mortgages, loans, deadlines, absent husband and what not. But she looks at her child with a tiresome haze as if to say, “I won’t leave without you.” She goes to sleep at the airport gate, as her child runs around making friends with inanimate object, finding curiosity at the stairs and the walls. She’s tired, she’s asleep but she makes sure she wakes up to check the whereabouts of her child. Each time the child discovers a new region or makes a new ‘friend’ he makes sure to tell her. She acknowledges and hears the detailed report as if it’s an important mission.
Whatever the child does, she looks at him with a happy tiresome gaze. “Oh sweet child’o mine, how young, so full of life, waiting to discover each and every corner of the world.” She knows there’s nothing left to discover in this world, let alone the airport which has been metricously planned and built. However, unaware of all the worldly worries the child climbs the higher of the stairs, travels the farthest of the gates and sees all of the planes there are to see. His world is purely confined to that of the airport. At each and very corner there’s something new he hasn’t seen, something that’s waiting to be explored. The world’s an endless treasure waiting to be explored piece by piece.
No matter how much tired she is, her eyes stay affixed on her child running around her vicinity carelessly. “You’re a part of me, you always will be, I’ll never leave you, even if we miss our flight, we’ll sleep together until the sun comes to shine.” Slowly and slowly her visions begins to die, she can’t hold on any longer, the sleep is taking over her. Unconsciousness looms and she falls asleep head first on her bag.
She wakes up thinking she missed her flight, but her child’s standing with her bag pack on saying, “Mom the flights boarding, let’s go, we better not get late, home sweet home.”
