In Colour

It’s all in super slow motion. Amir is running, but not too fast, on a brown dry narrow patch of land. On both sides of the path, there are lush green fields – without end, the sun shining majestically above.

He feels like a marathon runner, about to complete his final lap, almost reaching the finishing line, the slow, lazily moving surroundings accentuating the feeling of triumph. Not only this, there are a countless number of people on the boundary of the path as well, held away from Amir by a strong, taut rope, the sort one sees at such races.

And like the races, most of those people look frantic, trying to reach out desperately, extending their hands just to have a touch or grab at the centre of attention – Amir. There are others too, who stand quietly by the side, just watching him pass by. Some look angry and some forlorn, gazing at him through the emptiness in their eyes. He can even see a woman holding a handkerchief in one hand, wiping away her tears. For some reason he doesn’t quite understand, all the faces seem familiar in some way or the other, as if he had personally known these people at some point in history.

But nothing clicks.

Their faces suggest that they might be shouting, shrieking, urging him on. But all is mute. All Amir can hear is the sound of his own breath, the motion of his own muscles, his feet thumping on the ground again and again, the sound too, in super slow motion.

People keep passing by, faces appearing and disappearing in the space of a moment. But the finishing line is nowhere in sight, and the jog continues. Slowly, Amir gets so used to the rhythm of it all – his breath, the movement of his limbs, those familiar but unknown faces – that he doesn’t feel anything anymore. His mind has almost gone numb.

And then he sees his mother in the crowd, standing serenely, looking at him with eyes that tell just one emotion. He sees his father too, and his grandparents, his uncles and aunts, the maid at his village home, the kindergarten ‘best friend’ he had almost forgotten the name of, the first girl he ‘fell in love’ with back in Class 2, his junior school class teacher, the bully who pushed him repeatedly against the wall every morning at school, the person at Mother Dairy from whom he used to take the milk every evening, his father’s friend whose sight he couldn’t stand as a child – everyone! Everyone!

Amir watches perplexed, trying to call out to these people, but no words come out. He tries desperately to say something to them, a Hello maybe, but it’s as if his vocal chords have disappeared. He finally gives up, and instead, waves at them as they wave at him, smiling at them as they smile at him.

It feels as if it would never end, new faces replacing old ones, more and more of them coming from the recent past.

And then, he wakes up. It’s a dream.

He smiles to himself, and gets up from the bed, feeling oddly enlightened.