Cold Hot Chocolate

It started of as an ordinary day. I was sitting in a bustling roadside café waiting for my hot chocolate with extra-whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles on top. It was 8:30 in the morning. The sun had come up an hour ago and the early winter chill was still powerful. I wrapped my jacket tightly around myself as I longed for that hot chocolate. The traffic whizzed past me like bullets. The cafe was filling up as the heat was slowly gaining intensity. A young couple walked in and sat down on the table next to mine. They seemed like a happy couple who had just discovered love and fallen intensely and passionately into it. The boy could not keep his hands of the girl and the girl was smiling like she had just won a lottery. The waitress came to take their order, a very pleasing looking girl. The girl deceptively scrutinized the boy to see if he had noticed. But he had eyes only for her. The next to walk in were an old man and woman. It was instantly clear that they had been together their whole lives. The way they walked and stood next to each other it seemed like their bodies had become one. There was no need to talk or to ask. They seemed content to savour every moment just as it was. Then walked in a mother, her young son and her teenage daughter. The boy was happily eating a huge bar of chocolate which was all over his clothes and face. The girl was displaying an act of special animosity towards her mother. She wanted a coffee because she felt that she was old enough to have it but her mother didn’t think so. I could almost hear what she was thinking even from three feet way.
Suddenly the T.V. came on and on it was a horrific image. A quivering voice was saying , "And just in...an event that will change America forever." The image was of the twin towers falling and people were dying in astonishing numbers every second. The news reporter was crying unable to say anything.
The pleasing looking waitress didn’t look so pleasing anymore. Her mascara was smeared as she dropped the coffee pot in her hand.
The girl on the table next to mine had tears in her eyes. The boy tried to comfort her but she didn’t want to be comforted. All she could say was, “Dad.”
The old man clutched his heart and the old woman closed her eyes like she was in pain. They held each others hands as if hanging on to their reality.
The son dropped his chocolate on the floor. The daughter went and hugged her mother.
I looked down at my table and saw that my hot chocolate had come and was getting cold. But I didn’t feel like drinking it anymore because the person I was waiting for was never going to come.

My Guardian Angel:

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my school bus waiting for the bus to start moving. Suddenly a girl, who I didn’t know, sat down next to me. I was going to say hi but just at that moment an innocent-looking flower flew in through the window and fell onto my lap. Some people would say that autumn is in full swing and these flowers are literally taking over the city at the moment so the landing of such a pretty thing on my lap was not something to mull over. They would say that it ‘just’ happened and mediocre things like this are worthless. But I thought different and I was right.

For weeks I kept thinking about that little flower, which withered away by the time I reached home. It had been a beautiful thing to behold but was too fragile to bloom on. I knew in my heart that it was some sort of sign. A warning for what was about to happen. Now, I just had to figure out what that thing was.
The flower landed in my lap the second that girl sat down next to me. The timing was exact and thus, I had my only clue. The ‘thing’ that was about to happen or may have already, had to be something related to this girl. That afternoon in the bus was the first time I met her. She started talking to me and soon we became friends. I felt queer around her but could not help but succumb to her. I don’t know why but I felt like I knew her from long ago. From such a long time ago that my memories could not delve that far and my mind could not exist at such a depth. For the first time in a very long time I felt at home.

Soon enough, I became inevitably close to her. We were always together and I told her everything. From my deepest, darkest secrets to what I had eaten for breakfast that morning. She would hardly talk but listened to every word I had to say. She gave me advice, comforted me and even scolded me at times. I realized that she hardly ever told me anything about herself but I felt like I already knew everything about her. Her likes, her dislikes, her favourite places to eat, the movies and the books she liked. Such detailed knowledge about a stranger scared me but I felt nothing but safe when I was with her. I had this odd feeling that I loved her.

For some inexplicable reason, I never told my mom about Serena. Something stopped me from saying her name out loud in my house. She had never seen my house and I had never seen hers. But, I had a very strong desire to bring her home and introduce her to my family. I couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to and so I decided to give it a try. The next morning I said casually to her, “Don’t you think its weird that you’ve never come to my house?” Serena didn’t say anything and just kept smiling her friendly smile. But, I notice the slight tightening of her eyes and the sudden pain in her expression.
A little chagrined I went on in a small voice, “Well, there’s always a first right? So my house, 4-“
“No I cant.”
“But, why?”
“I have to go.”
I failed to understand what had just happened. I felt very hurt by her ignorance. I was close to tears by the time I reached home. The first person to see me was my mom and I, seeing her worried face, I told her about Serena and our deep friendship. As I told my story, my mom’s face turned white. Then, her hands started trembling and by the end she was shaking from head to toe. After I finished she burst into tears and ran into her room. I was very shocked and shaken by her reaction. I didn’t understand anything that was happening and I felt like I was going insane. There were too many questions in my mind and too many possible answers. I went out to get some air and clear my head, when the same white flower fell into my palms. Suddenly, I knew that I had put one piece of the puzzle together. The flower was a symbol of mine and Serena’s friendship. It was pure, innocent and fragile. We both had had the premonition that something was not right about our friendship. There was something odd that I couldn’t put my finger too. The flower only survived till the end of the bus ride. It stayed with me throughout my journey and left me once I was home.

Through this discover came the realization, that I would never see her again. I was still confused and hurt but I now I knew that I would get all my answers soon. I never told Serena about the flower. It was our flower but somehow it felt more like my own. And that is why I knew that I had to give it to her. So, I put it in an envelope and left it on the park bench that we used to sit on every evening. I wrote on the envelope only four words – I’ll love you, forever.

That night I had a dream. I dreamt of an elder sister. In my dream my sister was standing next to my mom, when she was pregnant with me, laughing and smiling. She was my age and spent most of her time talking to my mom’s bloated stomach. The dream kept switching between different instances showing me my sister getting ready, studying, eating and having fun with her various friends. Suddenly the dream switched to another memory of my sister. But, this one was not happy. She was lying in the bed sick with some sort of fever. And the day I was born she died. The dream ended with my sister sitting on that same park bench, with my envelope in one hand and our flower in the other, content and peaceful.

I woke up crying and screaming just as my mom ran in. she took me in her lap till I stopped crying. Then, I looked her in the eye and said,” Mom, Serena’s dead.”

“It’s not a coincidence, it’s magic.” :

The sky can mean so many things. It is everything and it is nothing at the same time. From the earth, it looks like an unending hole, which we are inside, void of anything real. When I look up at the sky, I immediately think about the human mind. The differences between the emptiness inside our skull and above our heads are as shocking as the similarities. The sky reflects our minds in a lot of ways.

A clear, bright and sunny day can easily be connected to our mind when we are happy and everything in life seems to be going perfectly. There are days when the whole sky is covered with gray-white clouds which threaten something formidable. This could be the state of our mind when we are having a horrible day and all the thoughts that cross through our head are bleak and dark. But days where you are very happy or very sad are rare. The days when there is a little of both are much more common. These are the days when you are worried and you may have problems but that does not mean that you aren’t happy. Such days are also more common in the sky too. Mostly,when you look up, half the sky is cloudy and half is clear. This is an almost ironic description of our minds too.
When it rains, the clouds turn gray and the sky becomes dull. In the context of our mind, that happens when we come over with inexplicable sadness. This sadness may change into anger like the thunder during the rain or it may fade away leaving a little pain but no more trauma.

Another amazing similarity is that the sky is unending. It is higher and deeper that we can even imagine comprehending. It contains the most magical and the most terrible things. We can keep looking at it till the end of our sight. These are the attributes that we can apply to our mind as well. It is too, unending and deep. We can keep plunging deeper and deeper into it and loose ourselves completely. How everything in life is so closely connected to something else is not a coincidence, it is magic. And it is extraordinary.

Growing Up

I feel that things have changed, people have changed and most of all I have changed. In what way is indescribable but the only thing that I am certain of in this new world is that we are going to keep changing. I don’t know what it is about high school that completely throws you off-track. We start off as a pack of innocent children who huddle together and are always unsure. Then slowly, the disease starts spreading. Affecting some students before the others till the change becomes so apparent that it cannot be ignored. Either get infected or be trampled. It’s over-powering but somehow it is not forced. We want to change because everyone is changing .Everyone has there own way and time of changing. Some people change so fast that you cant even remember if they were ever any other way and some people take a long time to stimulate and digest. Some people like the change and some people don’t. This difference of thought results in the different clichés that eventually get formed. Now everyone is a part of a different pack. Friends you thought you would have for life just don’t care anymore and people that you thought you had all figured out are showing unimaginable sides of there personality. Somehow it’s like kinder-garden all over again, you don’t know anyone. But , slowly when everyone has bloomed and changed and settled down things start getting better. You start liking this new way of living, this independence and the exhilaration which comes from it. Because after overcoming all the turmoils of Adolescence you finally grow up.