The Red Curtain

Long Red drapes with fine creases. It was so striking and sublime.

Some times subtle things offer you so much joy. Some ice cold water trickling down your dry throat, a cool breeze during your early morning walk, or delicate silence that let you sink in your dream pool. Things so small, you might just carry on without appreciating or even realizing it had come to pass. May be because the joy is brief, or because you are in a state of lazy bliss, enjoying the moment, that you don’t truly care as to who or what is the reason behind it. Especially if the things are so mundane, you just take them for granted and you don’t in fact care if they are not. These are just unexplained stretches of time with joy, that’s beyond reason or purpose.

For me, it was one of the curtains in the small momentarily empty ice-cream shop that I visit often. All the same it might have been the silence that waltzed the empty room, the comfortable posture I was in or the chilling effect of the air-conditioner, I did not indeed know or care. Yet, something about it was so pleasing, I sank in thoughts.

Slowly I started talking to myself the way I always do when I am cheerful. And when I do that, it’s not just about what I whisper in my head, it’s about the visions I see, the voices I hear and to some extent, the sense of touch.

It started with an instinctive chant of random words “soft…fabric…happy…curtain…warmth…red…passion…happy…silence…

chill…happy…”and so on. And with each chant I could see, hear and feel what I spoke. Gradually everything turned misty and I sank in to a deep reverie.

I walked down a busy lane filled with chirp and chatter of little lads as they played merrily. Mist. I was in an empty classroom ringing with laughter that belonged to people long lost in the sands of time. Mist. I strolled past an old house singing melodies I once knew so well. Mist. I stood gazing at the silhouette of a person standing still, seemingly near yet so far. Time trickled quietly but the image did not vanish. I inched gradually forward and the face came to light. Mist.

A resounding noise of smashing metal and there I was sitting again in the familiar ice cream shop looking down at the red curtain that lay on the ground reverberating with the impact of the fall. As I stood up and walked away, the memory of the beautiful curtain, the silence, the comfort, the happiness, all faded away to be replaced by one desperate plea

“Peter pan…if you can hear me…take me to Neverland”