As the clock struck 6 in the morning, Mrs Mongia stepped out of her apartment and down in the elevator she went and out for a morning walk. It was a beautiful morning, then again, all mornings seen even for a second without a burdening complexity in mind can prove to be beautiful.
She walked along the road first and then she entered the park and continued on. As her walk brought her near to a park bench, she thought she recognised someone sitting or rather sleeping. On identifying the person turned out to be Mr Pathak and Mrs Mongia became a little tense.
Mr Pathak claimed to have been a politician once, not the one pretending to be good but the openly controversial one. People were afraid of him as well as his two sons. Politician or not, they were rich and powerful and with just enough low iq and resources to be a menace to society. Although over the time their dominance had reduced drastically, with people now being more aware, confident and active than before, but some residual fear still remained especially if one of them was seen like this.
Mrs Mongia noticed Mr Pathak was asleep and that his phone was lying on the ground near his right foot. Although she did not want to, she picked it up and was thinking of something to say when Mr Pathak fell sideways on the bench and with a single roll he was down on the ground with his face facing the sky, there was definitely no life in there anymore.
A big event was held with a lot of money spent in memory of the now late Mr Pathak. There were many people attending but not many from the locality and there was not really a lot of difference in the locality as once people thought there would be if an incident of such nature were to occur to Mr Pathak; hence there was not much thought about it, just the unsettling momentary realisation of someone passing away.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 