Avik's Story

I frantically searched one more time, now in pockets - both of my jacket and jeans, again through the small luggage - now literally rummaging it, and then the pockets of other spinners. I looked down to the floor and scanned the surrounding, hoping to find a piece of paper and a small white hardback, lying somewhere unruffled. I could feel an enormous hole inside, moving up, sliding down, as if it was bouncing against stomach.   I quit the line and parked the cart at a side. I called the young cab driver, in a faint hope that the folder would be still on the roof of cab or somehow, by any miracle, he kept that with him. After a few rings, he picked up. My voice shivered. “Hello. Hello brother. I am the guy you just dropped at airport.” He recognised me at once. “Yes sir. I remember. Is everything fine?” “I can’t find my passport yaar. Is it in your car?” For the next few moments, which in particular felt like millions of years, I didn’t hear his voice. All I heard was some static white

Have you ever had a moment, when all other things of yours, including the ones which remained so dormant for years, that you already have forgotten their existences, like the rise of goosebumps or burning of lobules, get so buoyant that you want to scream out your tonsils? And you wish to keep screaming and yelling and screaming until everything before you just bursts and vaporises, and then you discover that you can’t even fucking move your own fucking tongue, as if it was never there, or underneath it, there is black void, just like space! I had. The airport looked otherworldly and shiny even at midnight. The massive thick glasses put a thin barrier between two worlds. Lit and dark. The ‘left-overs’ looked through the see-through wall and waved their loved ones, the ‘goers’, who soon would be vanished beyond numerous kiosks and then beyond the horizon. And I stood against a pillar absolutely in drunken stupor. My gaze was particularly at no where, but I am certain, it covered everyth

I am a vividly happy guy – everybody perhaps knows that; but what only few of them know is that I’m a bigtime crier too. Tears are familiar to me just like the smile of mine. They’re infectious. Tears are my best immune and sometimes survivals. They’re mostly hidden, literally behind walls – in safe custody of bathroom sometimes. But they’re precious. They bring life out of me everytime. They make me more humane everytime. And this time I cried seemingly for no reason. I was in Airport. I was on duty. Some big hot-shot bureaucrats were in city to attend a massive seminar hosted by the most powerful person in country, and when it was over they were returning their places of working – to different states. My job was to facilitate their departure procedure – a mundane boring job – mostly receiving calls from someone from hotel or drivers and then passing the same to Protocol Division inside airport. I preferred to seat outside - beside a café-stall and under a decorative shed, rather th