There was this huge barren ground in an area of a small town. A side of it was used by people and vehicles to pass, the rest majority of it was open to just any use one could think of. It was mostly occupied by children playing and running around. Occasionally, the elderly would gather to bathe in Sun and talk of their ongoing lives. At night stray dogs and cows would come around to rest in peace there. The ground was big enough to organise a decent wedding or any other function of similar nature.
There was a dry well near the edge of one side of the ground. Its opening had been long sealed now. Many ghastly tales had been associated with the well. They were mostly about ghostly appearances of people who had apparently accidentally fallen in the well or surrendered their lives to it. However, if anyone asked the children playing there about it, they would tell it was just a bizarre story made up by grownups and they had never witnessed anything of such nature.
The town was small and, in those years, there were rarely any people who could think of engaging in a profession which wasn’t well practised within the boundaries of the town itself. But the children playing in the ground had found something which had allowed them to expand their thoughts and dreams beyond the town, it had given them the glimpse of life beyond the simple comforts that the town had to offer.
So, what was it? It was commercial aeroplanes. A new route of commercial aeroplanes had been opened for travel, and the route passed over this small town. So, whenever an aeroplane passed over the ground, the children would stop playing to watch it soar across the sky, trying to think of where it was going and more importantly what the people who were travelling by it were doing in their lives.
It has nearly been more than 65 years from that time, the small town has moreover remained the same, apart from some variations of changes here and there. Some of the children grew up to be pilots and aircraft engineers, some moved to different cities to practise different professions while some worked to introduce new professions to the town.
Time kept flying, those who were once children grew old, some came back to spend their end phase in their beloved town while others remembered it till the end no matter where they were. But, for each of them the ground remained the place where their dreams took flight to the world beyond.
Early Morning Memories 