What is the greatest gift someone could give you?
The rectangular drawing room was neatly arranged.
The dining table was on one end of the room. It had three dining chairs, one chair each on the three sides of the table and on the fourth side was the wall. The cobalt blue tablecloth on the dining table was recently placed. The artificial red flowers were cleaned and placed in a long brass pot in the middle of the table.
On the other end of the drawing room was a wooden unit on which was a crt television with a black plastic body. The unit also had drawers and small cabinets towards the floor.
The room was also occupied by three wooden chairs placed adjacent to the light yellow painted wall and to their opposite was a low floor single bed. The bed was covered with a light brown sheet with white floral design.
There was the sound of rapid footsteps approaching. Footsteps of a young child looking for something.
Raju entered the room, his eyes scanning every corner of the room. He was starting to feel a pinch of frustration on not finding what he was looking for. Not, for long though. He found it resting against the back of one of the dining chairs.
It was a cricket bat, Raju’s very own. It wasn’t the first one Raju had owned. He had previously owned several bats made of hard plastic, but this was the first time he had got one made of wood, something which was a clear representation of the equipment he had seen in the matches on television.
The bat was a surprise from Raju’s father. Mr Manna had asked Raju to find the surprise gift he had got for Raju on this particular day and Raju found the cricket bat.
In the evening Raju went out to play, a proud owner of a ‘real’ wooden cricket bat. He played with it for many good months, almost a year. One day the handle of the bat came out of the shoulder of the bat, when Raju swung it hard to hit the ball for what he thought would have been a ‘six’.
Raju and his father tried various methods to fix the handle, but nothing could make it as strong as it used to be. It was like it refused to be reunited with the rest of the bat.
Years passed, Raju grew up. The bat had become history. If you asked him now, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell what eventually happened to the bat, but what he will be able to tell you for sure is how much he enjoyed having it and how his father had gifted him not a bat, but a memory to remember in life.
Early Morning Memories 
One response to “A Memory Lived & Remembered”
Nice 👌
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