Summer of 69

It was the summer of 1969. I stood leaning quietly against the poorly cemented wall of my terrace, brooding on the intricacies of my insignificant existence. I was disheartened and plagued by loneliness. It was that unfortunate phase in my life where I sensed that God had wantonly abandoned me. I kept an eye open for idly gazing at the buzzing market scene below. It appeared somewhat similar at any length of the day as if ignorant of the sweltering weather that made me so uncomfortably hot.

In that sleepy state of mind, I lazily tried to decipher the various people. They seemed only concerned with their own petty affairs of buying or selling goods, mostly fruits that could no more be seen in the hot baking afternoon heat more than the tiny black flies that covered them. The fruit sellers could not have appeared more unbothered, fanning their perspiring brows as they sat squatting in their khadhi dhotis that must have once been of the color white.

Next to the fruit stalls was a tiny repair shop- if you can call it one- of four bamboos loosely tied to the ends of a cloth of the color of the sun. The cloth roof sheltering from the direct blistering heat drooped down as low as to almost touch the head of the figure working beneath it. A young scrawny boy with dirty slipshod hair who looked no more than seven was absorbed in his work of thread and needle. It was if there was no life outside the universe of his shabby yellow shop and sewing served the sole purpose of his life. His small brown hands kept at his work with such cleverness that it was a while before I could notice the beautiful lady towering above him. I was that engrossed.

When I say beautiful, I mean that hers was an unearthly presence in that ordinary third grade place where the air is always putrid and everything appears to be rotting. Her dark brown curls were cozily cushioned against the sides of her silken cheeks. Her taut velvety skin was delicately wrapped in a blue sleeveless cotton dress that came to just above her knees. As she laughed at something the boy said to her as he held outright her pair of silver heels with his two bony fingers, she straightened the light brown straw hat that had been drooping to the right side of her lovely face. I caught a glimpse of those hazel eyes that saw the world around her only through the light shades of innocence.

It was a sign. I had seen an angel fallen from the sky. Her name was Hope.

The heat suddenly felt unbearable, and I felt a burn forming on the sides of my cheeks. I shut my eyes briefly for a few seconds to drink in as much of her as I could. In those moments she vanished, never to come back again before my eyes.

That was a good twenty years back, and the sight of her altered the course my life would have taken if I had wasted my youth any more on those dreadful thoughts. Here I am now, laughing and reading bear stories to my four year old daughter. She will have a good night’s sleep because her daddy takes care of all the boogey monsters. Her curls often do remind of the summer noon that was.