SHE NEVER GOT A KISS…

 SHE NEVER GOT A KISS…

                      In the Vast blue sky, the sun flaunted its physical allurement with a yellowish red tinge of dazzling light creating an aura of godly descendance. The cold wind slashed against my face, almost freezing my body. I was sitting near my window and sipping my hot brewed coffee. Fresh snow had covered the whole area with a white powdery blanket. The icy droplets glittered with a reflection from sunlight. I was gazing towards the floating ice drops that were vanishing on the verge of brume.

                      The cold air sneaked in and seeped inside the layers of her feathers and made it too heavy for her to fly on. She felt a nasty cramp inside her pneumatic bone and felt hard to move forward. With all the odds she fell down and struck against a piece of snow mound. Her whole body screamed with pain. Her eyes became numb in the cold air. The falling snow flakes made her surrounding hazy. She dragged her body with her nails pushing against the floor but couldn’t, rather her blood created a red marked line on the white snowflakes. “I am going to die”, her sensible mind mused. Her heart sank and she wanted to cry. She looked up at the sky with a hope in her blood filmed eyes, for any magic to happen.

                      I stopped sipping my coffee and unknowingly stood up from my chair. With eagerness in my mind, hastily I opened the door and went outside. “Oh such a holy crap. Honey, what happened to you?” I put a question without expecting an answer. What I saw, to my complete surprise a history created. A love blossomed out of the thorny, up hilled, rough surface of the snowy mountain, between a snow finch sparrow and a cute little white puppy.

                      My puppy, Romy was trying to give comfort to a little snow finch sparrow at her back. He embraced her body with a dearly hug and warm of wrap. I took both of them to my house and did the fast aid, whatever was possible to that snow finch. After putting some ointment she turned her neck with utter pain and caught a glimpse of our presence.

                       My introduction, which is a least matter of concern, yet important as who I am, witnessed a heavenly emotion in this mundane earth, while doing my intern as a trainee doctor in a refugee camp at a very dicey environment of Kashmir, India. Dicey in the sense, our lives were hanging by a thread. Our lives fraught with danger, that any moment there could be foreign invaders and a mass destruction. In spite of all these violence, I was doing my work smoothly only because I had my Romy, with whom I could share my loneliness. Romy was not old enough to be highly trained but perhaps he was a crackerjack, having enough gray matter inside his brain cells to sense my emotions and soothe my heart. Romy was a white, healthy cute puppy with a serene, flawless, soft and thick hairy coat of skin. His appearance was enough to make any one feel the essence of love and warmness.

                       And on that very special day snow finch was added to our sweet small family of Romy and me. After some days of care and medication Finch was healed and became friend with Romy and me. These two small creatures added great joy to my life. Slowly and swiftly I got into their lives and tried to understand their exchange of emotions. The nomad in me was completely surrendered to their love.

                       When Finch looked into those teary eyes of Romy, her heart skipped with an unknown madness. All her aches evaporated. Romy often did a round dance around Finch, as if he pleaded his shivering lips to bring out the words kept for her, to bring out the words of gratitude and love, for decorating his life with canopies of joy and liveliness. Finch wanted to reciprocate him with a warm hug with her whitish brown feather. Romy tried to put her on his cuddly back and with her little cooperation, she succeeded to get on. She felt little warm in that freezing cold and tried to rest her eyes for a while. She felt like wrapped inside a scrim cloth that thawed all the ice inside her. She could feel his beating heart at his back and tried to synchronize with her’s.

“Being so young and delicate how did you land here?” asked Romy with a trembling voice.

                       A question of deadly past was surfaced before Finch. She had to face it with a strong heart. With moist eyes and shaking voice Finch explained.

                      “Yes, to everyone’s surprised I had lost touch with my parents, while migrating over the Atlantic and was not old enough to trace them out over the vast ocean. Before I could decide what has happened, I was badly hit with a stone by some people. To God’s goodness, I fell inside a bush and before anyone could trace me I managed to fly away far.”

                       Finch took a deep breath and her looks fell straight on Romy’s eyes. She couldn’t remove her looks from him. Those were stuck like glue. With a great sense of gratitude and contentment she spoke out a great tyranny of life, “Destiny has made my way to you and pulled me apart from my family. You are the one who saved my soul from this whirlpool odyssey of life”.

                        My Rommy never lose a chance to shower love. Sometimes I felt like blessed. If Romy were a human, I would have fallen for him. He was such an innocent creature I had ever seen. And that day a list of events happened, that started very innocently. Romy leaned forward to Finch to give her first ever kiss. Yes, sometimes it looks different but animals have their ways.  He tried to snuggle a bit closer at her feathers. But Finch flew away and sat on a snow mound with powdery dust of snow sprinkled on Romy’s face.  Romy waxed lachrymose and started to dig the snow out with his fine sharp nails.

                        Trying to mollify, Finch said, “You may have had many kisses as you were staying with families. But this is going to be my first ever kiss and I wanted it to be special. I will give my first kiss to you on your birth day.”                                                                                                                                             Now Romy looked bright. Both of them enjoyed the weather and started to play with ice cubes and snow dust. Romy used to run after dragonflies and Finch flew over him. Sometimes she sat on his back and tickled him with her beak. This was their favorite game. They just enjoyed each other’s company. They waited for the whole day with the stars to shine in the night. They waited for the whole night with the birds to sing in the light. They just wanted to save the whole life time till the eternity passes away to be spent with each other. They live by the sun and love by the moon to make each light beam a new memory of their life. With each passing day, they got so engrossed in their love that human could hardly understand. And silently Romy was waiting for his birthday and Finch for her first kiss, which was supposed to be celebrated by me.

                         My father had brought Romy’s mother from road side while struggling with life. She was enceinte and her accouchement took place at our home. After giving birth to Romy, she died. That day was my birth day, but we couldn’t celebrate. On that moment, I decided to celebrate it as Romy’s birthday. My father gifted me Romy and from that day this innocent creature became my best friend.

                       For Romy’s birthday I decided to make a small igloo house with ice cubes. My intention was to make these two creatures happy and surprised. I just wanted to let them know that humans do understand their emotions. With passing time I made all the arrangements and in the night before the most awaited day, I prepared that igloo house. I decided to name it as “Lamha”, meaning time. And it was because, these two made my time worth groomed and my soul well adorned. In this way I wanted to say a “Thank you”. I painted the name on a white board with yellow and orange colour and placed it on that small house. I placed small colorful flower plants in front of the door. I tried to create a small lane with green plastic grasses with white dew drops on it.  The door was of wood and a small pear shaped bell was hanging from a red colored thread weaved with golden strings. The house had two small windows and it was a house with 2.5ft height and 1ft radius. It was well spacious for a puppy to move inside and play. I covered the roof of the house with green and small grasses. It was just well-nigh picture of my imagination of a fairy land. I went to sleep and was very happy as I was going to give Romy a pleasant surprise. By the time I went for sleep, both Romy and Finch were asleep.

                       In the morning, small little flowers of varied colors were beautifully decorated on the roof of that snow house. The sun was slowly rising and the beautiful light hypnotized me as I opened my window. I thank the whole universe for this spectacular view. The day might be usual for anyone but for me it was my birthday in some angle. To surprise Romy, I never let him out of my room. Finch was busy flying from here and there, collecting flowers and petals and putting them on the snow house. The whole world understands only one language, the language of love and emotion and so as the Finch. After seeing me she flew towards me and sat on my shoulder and started to rub her beak in my half clutched hair. I felt like she was congratulating me for my birth day.

                      When I flanged my palm around her, she sat there and I brought her close to my face to express my gratitude. I peered through her blinking lids, she flapped her wings and the water particles, surfaced on her body from dew drops, got sprinkled on my face. I got a reply of “thank you” from her activity. She flew away perhaps in search of more flowers for their new snow house.

                      “Awww…” I felt like screaming. I felt my body suddenly very heavy and a very bad pain inside my stomach as if a sharp object entered into my body piercing the stomach apart. I looked down and I realized that I was shut. Blood flowed through the body and my whole body was getting collapsed. Within no time I fell down on the floor. “RRRooomyy..” my voice got chocked.

                      The door was half closed and I could see that a battle was loomed into the place. The whole area got roiled with bullet sounds. There was yelling of people all around. The invaders hurled grenades, but that did not stir up a fatal impact, hence they resorted to incessant firing, resulting in a heavy number of casualties. The floor of the room was flooded with my blood. Romy was shocked and frightened. He came to me and tried to embrace me. He jumped and ran here and there. He was crushing fate for his helplessness. I was lying straight on the floor and pressing against my stomach to stop bleeding. Even I had no idea that I was going to lose my breath in next few minutes. I observed him carefully as he walked to the door. I knew that time was running out but suppressed the urge to check my watch. I took a deep breath and started counting in reverse under my breath. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

                      My throat chocked as I heard a booming sound that almost cracked my ear drum. Romy stood still. Blood was flowing out of his ears. Before I could understand what has happened, Romy fell down on the ground and shivered. I dragged my body and reached near Romy. His voice was cracking and he was looking straight into my eyes. A thin film was covered her eyes. Seeing him in such a situation my eyes were filled with tears. His heart stopped beating. His paws were getting cold inside my palms. I screamed like a two year child that yelled for its mother. All I could remember that, I was pleading for life but my prayers seemed to have faded out.

                     They finally bludgeoned us into accepting the truth of life. They conquered the boundaries stepping on many dead bodies. Jacques-Yves Cousteau once has rightly said that, there are no boundaries in real planet earth. No United States, no China, no Taiwan. River flow unimpeded, across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides, the pulse of the sea do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on earth.

                     The invaders had already occupied the space killing many people. If they would have craved for a place in our heart, I must say that, they could have plenty of it. But they choose to make a way through it and pierced it with a metal bullet. I really wonder if they could imagine a life without love and innocence.

                      Finch came back and got shocked seeing all these. She flew over there for some time from our bodies to the snow house. The feeling of relinquishment filled her heart. Her wings felt weak and heavy. Then suddenly she spread her wings for flight and soared into the air towards the enemy troop. She got herself into the nozzle of their tanker and made it chocked for some time.

                      Out of the tank nozzle she looked up at the sky and saw the bulging clouds floating across. She could see the face of Romy in the pattern of the clouds. The clouds often take the shape of our thought and give us our share of rain.

                      Suddenly another booming and it started to rain. Small body parts of Finch flew away scattered at the rate of kinetic speed of the bullet, high up to the sky as if they tried to touch those clouds. Her blood got diluted with the rain water and seeped inside the cracks of the snowflakes of the snow house, named “Lamha”.   

                     She never got a kiss but the gun grunts. The armed dictators played tricky to win the game, throwing a card of death. But Finch took off her physical apparel and saved her soul.

                    “Here is your coffee, ma’am” the waiter offered at a cafeteria. “Thank you”, I replied swimmingly. I was gazing outside the window on a snowy morning.

                                                                  

Story by Shalan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.