There are nights that come back resistant to forlornness of its bearers, the souls that wander infinite realms in their minds- of places, people, lost memories and burgeoning future out of a silent storm. Then there are these nocturnal sufferers who cannot help but lie awake awaiting their own dawns, perhaps for ages. I awaited one too, for I knew that every night, even the darkest ones are followed by a dawn. Light is as much a victory as darkness is, the only, difference- the latter lasts longer. And it did, that night when I lay wide awake like an insect on its back writhing in the heat, within and without. The fever was unbearable. The smog of the city, the concrete parapets, the humid stale air; all of it had added to the noxious heat cutting the night, like fire on ice. The heat rose and my body felt roasted. I gasped at intervals for some fresh air, craning my neck, desperately towards the window but the thirsty birds ending all thirsts of their evenings had flown away. The cup of water kept for them was empty, just at the edge of the pane. How do I pass this night? I turned back thinking that the power of imagination is perhaps stronger than memory. For you believe what you want to believe and remember most what you would have given up, forgetting. Otherwise why do most people do not like to talk or at times think of their pasts? Nothing to do! I put my own palm on my forehead and tried to gauze the temperature. How on earth would I feel anything? So let us imagine that since I didn’t feel anything, I was perhaps troubled by something else and not fever. The weather, I suppose. This festive season, maybe. Or this realization, which likes an imaginary past I wanted to throw out of my skull-box. Everyone (including my roommate) had left for Holi. The morning would be greeted by colors. All returns would be met with new happy faces- red, blue, green. And I, wrapped in my somber yellow bed sheet would lurk around my own brain trying to avoid the phone calls from my parents, sister and brother. I had failed to get a ticket for home this year. A colorless year rather. There was no excuse left either. What would I tell them? Should I complain about the ever growing population of India proliferating like a tumor or should I tell them that such festivals were just useless when in a country every other week there is a reason to celebrate when people die like ants on the street. Antagonistic! The fever was trying to grope my imagination now, trying to force itself inside as memory does and make me believe that it is rising. I had no other tool to fight it except imagination itself. But heated minds act like thermos flasks. They trap it and make it vaporous and unclear. I got up fighting that aching realization and sat like the Buddha wrapping that bed sheet all around my body. The roof was the tree and heat compensated for the sun overhead. I opened my laptop and started browsing through Facebook. Usual mundane activity! Bored, ever more so, I flipped to the page where they post those funny pictures making a joke out of almost everything and laughed inside. I laughed to smash the fever out of my body. I laughed for it was the only medicine at hand with me now, but with failure. Suddenly, I saw a message blinking in my chat box. It was from my old school classmate. She had once pinged me after finishing my first novel, revealing her surprise at how her own class mate with whom she had never spoken had turned into a writer. Like all memories registering faintly in the periphery of fame, I had remembered her words of praise but failed to remember her face. She might have sensed it then itself, so this time when she pinged me, her only query was: Do you remember me? I told what I did. Actually I was confused. She stayed silent for a while and asked how I was. I just typed F-E-V-E-R. Words spurted like bees out of a hive and one could easily detect even with feeble eyes that the fingers typing them were brief and anxious. Enquiring about my food habits, lifestyle, what-I-had-had-last, if-I-have-too-much-of-junk. I was surprised over the concern she showed. I whispered, Is she a doc or what? I rushed to click her blinking icon. Yes, she is a medico student. By the time I returned to my message box, she had dropped all her advices on what medicine to take and what to eat, what not to as well. She showed a forbearing sense of care and I felt very good with her benign affection towards me. I couldn’t say anything except “Thanks. So sweet of you”. I also asked few questions about her and she started telling me several things like an old close friends who has met after several years. I started experiencing a fortuitous series of feeling as the chat continued and felt so relieved after chatting with her for nearly fifteen minutes but I had to stop as I started feeling uncomfortable due to fever. When I shut down the laptop, a faint, wistful smile lightened my brooding mind and her soothing chat and care lay upon my burning body after chatting with her. The night was to pass.


Next morning when a shimmer of golden sun ray peeped through the window, I woke up. The fever seemed not to affect much. And the mind, quite clear. After drawing as many rivulets criss-crossing my window glass, I opened up to check my office mail to see if anything had popped up. Nothing. And as usual, if there were any messages left on Facebook, before I get down to drag myself to the pharmacy at least! There was indeed a message left behind- “Good morning. How are you feeling now? Let me know if you have taken the tablets. Be well. Shall be waiting for.” It was from her. And my smile was back. Stronger and remotely faint. There, I was wondering how to pass the cruel night and here it was this dawn awaiting to surprise me with a new light, beginning to grow lifting through the rain. A hope was to be found and a hand to hold.Sanjeev Ranjan