On a Tuesday morning, Mr Raheja woke with a heart heavier than usual. He had nowhere to be particularly that day. He had long retired from the role of a news editor at a prominent news channel. He had never had a time in his life when he wasn’t busy doing one thing or the other.
When Mr Raheja would imagine himself working, he would imagine a person with the speed of flight rushing around, doing the task at hand and also preparing for the one that may come. Career was well-managed and so were household requirements.
His late wife, who was a housewife, managed the rest of the world that supported Mr Raheja. They had a good bond that never reached greater depths of emotions.
There was a bit of pause to the rush in between, when their only son Parth decided to go into freelance photography. No one had any idea about it, but things turned out all right.
Mr Raheja slowly walked to the window and pushed the curtains aside to have a look at the morning sky.
Parth had married, but his work kept him traveling most of the time. But he would always come back home to his father, sometimes Mr Raheja’s daughter in law would decide to stay to look after Mr Rajeha when Parth was away.
Mr Raheja did go to the market in the morning and accordingly he planned his day, reading, writing, talking to people about what was going on in the field nowadays. So going to the market was one of the important milestones in his morning schedule, but the one he went with, his neighbour, Mr Sahu had sadly left the world two weeks back. Mr Raheja had reached his limit with the bearing of people going away.
For the first time in life, Mr Raheja felt the rush had ended in the mind, now he could see the things he could have paused for, like those times when his wife looked at him to stay and spend a moment or when his son as a child waited for him to read the storybook at night.
The eyes began to turn moist, finally life had paused but the moments had passed.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Something Missing
Early Morning Memories 
One response to “Something Missing”
Very nice,
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