It must be 2:30 or 6 AM,I thought. The screeching fan woke me up. Something had gotten stuck in it. Yes, I thought, something has got stuck somewhere.
My notebook was playing the song "Orange sky" for god knows how many hours in the repeat mode--
"...Sometimes sometimes
my mind is too strong to carry on...".
I rolled over to the other side of bed to free my arm which had gone numb because of me falling asleep with my hand cushioning my head. Half asleep, I thought, may be my mind has gone numb due to same reasons. Bloody squeaking fan was driving me crazy.
I tapped on the track pad of notebook to see the time. It was actually 4 AM. Clicked on gmail,it read -Inbox(1).Had received a mail from my brother -"congrats...will call you tonight!".Congratulation was for me taking up a new job in India.For some reasons I found it funny.Funny,I thought,it was indeed funny. How, in school days, me and my brother used to make fun of all the teachers and we were perfect at that.How he used to write speeches for me, which I would just mug up and win prizes.How in my science project final presentation, one of my partners gave up at the last moment and he jumped in to take his place. And he spoke more than me! How he knew that stuff is still unknown to me. And the project won 3rd prize in the city. How, when I used to ask him spellings of some words like "nascent" he would say "sc" knowing where I would have got stuck. Stuck -- I thought again- Something has got stuck somewhere.
"Orange sky" was still in its repeat mode--
"..Brother you know, you know
It's a long road we have been walking on..."
I read the mail again - "congrats...will call you tonight!" I wondered if he had mistakenly put the exclamation mark after second part instead of congrats. I mean the stirring part was supposed to be me taking up the new job and not him calling me tonight. Or maybe not, I pondered. He had called me 2 times in past 1 year, one amongst which was on my birthday. Moreover, there is nothing really exciting about my new job. Things have really changed over the years ,I thought. I started wondering how and when,if at all.Almost nine years back he left home for his college. Maybe after that. No. I was glad I was wrong again. I remembered him calling me up during my engg prep days and telling me that it won't be too tough for me. It never actually turned out to be. Maybe then, it was after me entering into college life. You know, both of us having made new friends and the whole new life thing. And for the third straight time to my pleasure I was wrong. Recalled the day when I borrowed a big sum from him for my Germany trip and promised to return it asap, to which he said "Don't say that; I am your brother and not your friend". It felt so right to be wrong.Stupid bloody noisy fan- I can't even reason out properly. And what more, I couldn't even guess the time correctly. 2:30AM, my ass. Time- yes this is the problem. It has changed and beaten me.I can't predict it correctly anymore.
"Orange sky" had started looping again from the start --
"well I had a dream I
stood beneath an orange sky..
with my brother standing by...."
Then,I fell asleep again.
