Ambika

Beware of gods. The kinds that make you hate each other. And wish you didn’t have a religion. I’m telling you this because there was once a boy who lived across the road. He used to play here, with me, with one leg on me and the other to push himself, so he could swing happily, without a worry in the world.
Playing with him made me forget things too. Like the rusted parts of me that were almost about to fall off, which are still rusted, still about to fall off.

Anyway, the boy who lived across the road knew the boy who lived in the house I was in. I think he was his friend or something. They’d play everyday, with or without me. They’d laugh and talk, play cricket, gilli danda, stappu, whatever. They’d occasionally sneak out to buy ice cream from the vendor, without anyone’s knowledge.

Yeah… I loved watching them play. It was my favourite pastime apart from my job that required me to close and open myself to visitors and my owners.

But as they say, all good things come to an end, this did too. But alas, this particular ending wasn’t happy one at all. It was sometime after the horrific blasts that left the city and its residents devastated.

I remember my owner’s wife shooing the boy (the one from across the road) away, saying, ‘go back home, you’re not welcome here anymore. If they see you playing here, they’ll burn down our house’.

I’m sure the little boy never understood a word of what she was saying, but ran away, tears rolling down his face.

After which I used to see him sometimes, walking across the road with his mother clutching his hand tight pulling him away from me, and away from my house.

The longing looks he cast in my direction as he walked past me, made my rusted parts creak.

Well, what can I say, I’m just a gate, I open myself and I close myself. I don’t think you human beings are any different, opening and closing yourselves to people at your own whims and fancies.

And hey, beware of dogs too. There’s a huge one here. But he is not as mean as the gods we’ve created.



On a gate