The “Livewire”

This weekend clubbed with Christmas was a long weekend and I was supposed to be alone this time. I had planned to wake up the dead poet inside me since I’ll be all alone at home. It really hurts when I see my self so emotional at one point and loosing it after the date changes :(. But fortunately or unfortunately my friend rang me and murdered my dream :-P.

So, I packed up all my stuff for a night stay and half-heartedly reached her home, the other end of Pune. Next bad news after reaching there was I had to play cricket and that too with people I did not know. “Who made this plan”, I asked with my sarcastic tone gathering roughness from the bottom of my heart. “Its me beautiful”, I heard a typical Techno-babes voice that is still hard for me to adapt after 2.5 years in IT industry. I turned around and I saw a girl in track pants with a full cup smile on her face. Her beautiful dark black hair tucked high with ruffle and grey T-shirt decently fitted her. My friend introduced me and she was my friend’s new room-mate. Then she took one step forward and here I noticed she limped. I could not believe this and I kept my focus on her next move and yes she had polio. Thousands of words struggled inside my nerves to describe her. I thought wait Nimisha, lets see her. I asked her that why did she think of a cricket match, who else is coming, I don’t know how to play and blah blah. She smiled at me and said I have never held bat in my hands. She took a pause and said that this is all organized just for change from the routine outings like movie and dinner on weekends. My friend Shivani took a deep sigh and told me this girl is restless. On that she swung both her eyebrows proudly.

Shivani told me that this whole week this girl convinced people to play, searched for a ground after a day long at office and arranged for all the cricket paraphernalia. Honestly speaking, I was ashamed of myself. I wondered how much do I lack the spirit and to be even more honest most of us. I recalled how most of us stick to bed when we are hurt or when it is hard to walk due to injury on leg or when there is a severe back-ache after long working hours. When I am hurt, I do not ever call anyone at home knowing the fact that mamma and papa would sense something is wrong. This is not my greatness. I would have called it great when I could keep my spirits high up even when hurt. These are the times when we loose our spirit and then something inside us brings all the reasons to be sad together making us realize that we are alone, miles away from home.

These thoughts completely prevailed me when Shivani brought me back with usual questions to the real world from the insane universe that lives inside me. Here she came with white cap on her head, a sporty three-fourth and a bat in her hands. She commanded her to come downstairs quickly as her friends have reached.

Finally, we were eight on the ground playing with 7th standard boys. It was a good match and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I never knew I could do balling or even strike a four :). But she was the one who volunteered first for all acts on the ground. Then we went out for balling and air hockey, I love the most. She was amazingly good in all!
We called it a day and came back home. I was lying on Shivani’s bed still searching for a word to describe her and this thought was running inside me with ever increasing speed. Suddenly, techno-babes voice broke the silence and asked me did you enjoy today? "Yes, I did", I said.
I got the word and the word is – “livewire”.

Now, we started talking about the other people in the group. Most of them passed out this year only and had lots of questions to ask me since we had met for the first time. Second reason for loving the day was somewhere down the line I have started enjoying being elder at office and at home. To me it feels so good to listen to juniors, knowing their fears, flirting going on with a new girl in team and the silly jokes. Agree..I am not so old but it is so good and a strange calmness blankets me because I am ahead of something. Though she is much senior to me, this thought of mine got the stamp of her consent too. “Livewire” now looked at me with a strange smile because my face to the strangers is not in congruence with the thoughts that reside inside me. I thanked God that we met. My mobile buzzed and we realized date is changed. She wished me with a beautiful smile, Good Night and left. Finally, the “livewire” entered the dream world to spark the life of the creatures there and to gather energy to enlighten the next morning.