loneliness

I was at the bus stop in Park Street, with my father and younger sister, waiting for the bus to arrive. The day had been cloudy, and as we arrived little drops of rain started falling on our tired bodies. We rushed for shade. The stop was crowded and the bus was often late. I was new to this part of the city. My holidays had started and I had come with my father for some work at the bank.

‘Let the rain stop a bit and we’ll catch a taxi, okay Rini?’ my father told me kindly. My sister was crying, she did not like the rain. But the rain just got stronger, and the bus was still not here. When I was little, I used to think that the rain was just the tears of somebody crying in the sky. ‘What are they crying for now?’ I wondered.

Finally my father went to fetch a taxi for us. It was a very old ambassador, and the driver seemed even more ancient. We got on.

‘Where to?’ the driver asked us in his incredibly tired voice. I suddenly thought about the number of times he had asked the same question in his long career. My father told it to go to Saltlake and put an arm around my sister. It was still raining heavily. I lowered the window a bit and let the raindrops caress my face. The driver turned on the radio. An extremely old film song was playing. I did not like old film songs. But today it seemed oddly appropriate. I passed my school. It was empty because it was a holiday. Even the streets were empty. Everybody was afraid of the rain.

I wondered what Shila was doing. She had insulted me just before the holidays. She called me a useless nobody. I wondered if I was really a nobody. If I really did not matter. And I thought about Rick and Riya. They were the most popular students in the school. I went in the bus with them everyday but they never noticed me. On the last day of school they had wished everybody a ‘happy holidays’ except me. Suddenly the taxi passed Riya. she looked at the window and saw me. And then she looked away. She did not notice me.

The taxi stopped. I got off. I really was a  lonely nobody. Maybe that was why the person in the sky was crying, because they were lonely too.