58 helped himself up. He looked at her in shame. Sarah smiled. She called him to the bench.
As they were sitting there, Sarah looked around to see how much had changed since that evening 20 years ago.
It was fall now. The pond was dry and the paths were clean without a stain of algae. The trees were nude and there were dried leaves all over the ground. Sure, the place felt like it was long forgotten. Like a ghost, drained of all its life...
“ The life has changed too”, Sarah thought.
The once shabby, sloppy child had now become a diligent mother. Tomas had died. So had her parents and all others, she had once cared for had now become a long memory.
It was both a thrilling and a tiring life she had had. But why think of it now?
She didn’ t understand.
She was still young. Married for 7 years and just divorced.
“ Changed a lot”, Sarah told herself and looked above.
The sky had the orange hue. It was vast, huge, growing bigger as you tried to reach... There was the sun on the horizon with the moon nearby as a shadow.
“ The same...”, thought Sarah as she turned to look at John.
He was staring at the skies too.
Any minute he may turn and ask what she had asked her Grandpa years ago. She laughed because years after she still didn’ t have anything to add. But nothing more had she ever wanted than what Tomas had added that evening at last.
“ You probably won’ t understand this, Sarah,” Tomas had said,
“ But some day you will look up at the sky and ask the question“ What is the purpose of all this … all this life.. What is the meaning of it?”
But you see, asking about the meaning of life is tautologic. Because life itself constructs the meaning.
Life itself … is the meaning …”
“ Tauto... what?”, asked the innocent soul.
Tomas laughed. Sarah laughed.
Years after she realized what she had done. She had just destroyed all the splendour in her Nana’ s philosophy.
Harikrishna Suseel 3101, Batch of‘ 14