Dust: The Story of a Little Boy

This is a story, with a few people in it. The people are ordinary. Their lives are ordinary. The story is about...well let’s see what it’s about. All I can tell you is it has a little boy in it.

There was once a little boy, you see. He was plump, dressed in shorts all the time, did not like to study and spent his time reading books. His mother used to tell him stories too; but she had an annoying habit of leaving them unfinished.  So, he made up endings to stories all by himself. Usually, they were happy endings. Some, were sad. Most were simple. The first time someone ate ice cream and had a cold. The first time he went to his grandmother’s house and she treated him to Dosa from Udipi’s.

Now, much as we’d like our little boy to remain little; sadly it isn’t so. As time passed the boy grew up. As he grew up, his mind expanded. He became interested in music. He became a fan of some English group with a very strange hairstyle and took to crooning songs at the top of his lungs. He started to take those stories he had written in his youth more seriously and began to compose. He also found he liked to tinker with things and to take things apart.

But then, one evening, the little boy saw something. It was a glimpse rather. A tiny pulse of light. The boy was confused. He could not understand what he had seen. The truth is, he hadn’t seen anything. He had felt something; rather he had sensed someone. But who?

The little boy kept growing, because Time kept passing him by. He kept reading and he kept talking to people. His father, his mother and his grandmother. One thing the boy never understood however; in spite of having grown so much is why people went away. I mean to say- there they were just a few days before and then they sort of went off. They left bodies behind, but then those bodies were not them. The bodies were shells. Where had the people gone?

The boy also remembered glimpsing that same something or someone each time someone went away. Sometimes, he could even tell when someone was going days before they actually left.

And so the boy wondered. Where were all these people? He knew where people came from, he knew about something called “souls”. He subscribed to the belief that “souls” existed. If so, where were the souls?

Then, one day the little boy looked up. He saw stars in the sky. He also felt that someone near him. The little boy realized what he was seeing. He was seeing everyone who had gone away, looking down at him and smiling. His grandmother, who was the first to go. His dog who followed some years later. And most recently, his great grand uncle.

And when the little boy sleeps at night, sometimes he dreams of bad things. He remembers pain. He remembers fears. But then, sometimes he also dreams of the people who have gone and the boy smiles. One day, the little boy, will no longer be called little; and will also go away. He will go up above and he will smile down at another little boy, just like him.

I hope that boy smiles back.

The Bilge Master