Happy birthday.

When i was 8, i was very sick once.

I opened my eyes, and

voila! There was the TV right in front of the bed.

Another morning i was very sick.

I opened my eyes, and

all i could see was the back of his head,

all curly and dark.

Another day, during dinner

he lifted the kettle holding

side by side

with my mom.

Both smiled for a some 3, 4 secs and started eating.

I know some day he'll lose his hair, his teeth, his everything!

At a time when his brain becomes ridiculously big.

We planned many things on the eve of 14^th oct. Every year

though we never executed it.

Because of him, i have them, i have her.

I love him.

       It was a warm usual sunny morning on our campus, a few days back rather. The winter is approaching. No sunlight entered the classroom. The yellowish green leaves and the half dried creepers, near the windows, were not allowing it to pass them through. However, the room was filled with tube lights and the sound of the fast whirling fan over the heads of some fifty students including myself. The light reflected from the blackboard was hurting my eyes, or so i thought. I couldn't see anything written on it. It was annoying, not that it mattered but because it was not a very nice experience to not see something clearly. It was one of the monotonous classes of our monotonous life.

    Sir Jibu was taking the class continuing the lecture he had started in the last class on Hamlet, one of the plays of Shakespear. i was sitting at a corner,trying to make my cognitive ability to function to its fullest.It was not going good. The class was running just too fast for my neurons inside the brain. I wondered how the others are managing it.

      Then i saw Neelu wearing a torquoise polo T-shirt in the first bench, sitting next to Anenjana who was wearing a kurti of the same color. Out of the blue, a yellow butterfly flew in, flattering and flapping its tiny wings with brown edges. Sir Jibu threw up his hand in the air and made a bud-like-shape closing his fingers into one point. He was explaining how fragile a girl can get like a bud of a flower according to one of the texts of Shakespeare in Hamlet. That day, there were more girls than the guys i'm sure. I dont know if they were listening to what he was explaining and what were their reactions if they had been listening at all. I, myself was too busy looking at the butterfly, its texture, its softness and its life. It worries me to not know whether they are flying happily or just moving around hysterically. I wish i could see their face. I wish people could see my face. Things could have been much more easier then.

    Yesterday, i saw the same butterfly near the ground when i looked down from the opened window of our classroom during an oral communication class. The bushes down there had grown so much. It looked like an unshavened thick beard.