Old lanes

Death has a smell, a weird smell, which keeps you following wherever you go. When I opened the doors of that house, it felt like time hadn't moved a bit here. Except there's the skeleton of a rat and a spider's web. The good old neighbour came to ask if I needed anything. I politely smiled and asked her to sit with me for a while. It was an attempt to make my house smile, our chitchat. She and her lovely son always ring me to ask how I am doing. There's a thing: in villages or small towns, people may be nosey but some of them genuinely care. I was asking about everything and behaved like the same old person, which once I was. I opened the shoe rack, and my boots fell. Her eyes fell on them. She asked me about the last time I went on the ride. 'It's been a while.' She started to reminisce about the crazy adventures her son and I used to go on. How much our coming home late used to annoy them all? Now, there's no one to annoy, no one to scold, no one to tell us we should keep our jackets on, and pack raincoats with us. Being told our taste in music was so poor, it could cause anyone's ears to bleed. Now both of us live away from home, and our bikes, and jackets are in store. I'm the one who shut the door. It was a pact between us, until or unless, I wouldn't open the door, none of us would touch the bike. This is the part of my life, I don't want to tell anyone. 

The curls of this lady, once black, now had greyish hew. I joked about her turning old and she started to tell me about her forgetting things. She told me how often she gives a ring to our landline, without thinking that there's no one to pick it up now. How badly I wanted to tell her even do the same, every damn night. when she got to know that I wanted to colour the walls of the house. She asked me to either break them or fill whatever was inside them with new light. There's a glint of shine in her eyes, but a concerned face. Her curls were covered with a white Dupatta, and wrinkles around her eyes and cheeks, if fairies existed then they must have looked like her. She left the place, leaving pudding with me and advised to polish those boots. 

It is often said that a full moon can lead to mood swings. But I know my mood swings were not because of this. I turned on the music, and the whole house was filled with Metallica. I opened the doors of the store, leaving all the other businesses, knowing I needed to make a call for another secret adventure.