Just a call

5:15 A.M.

I wake up not because of the alarm.

No, that has been set for 6:30.

I wake up because my mobile rings.

Or more appropriately in anticipation that it will ring.

Ever since that day.

That fateful day.

When my mobile rang at the most weirdest hour.

Wrong number. Wrong timing.

Still, I wake up.

Every day.

Exactly at 5:15.

Jerky, jittery, edgy.

The silence of the room becomes deafening.

The walls seem to close down on me.

The hanging abstract paintings seem to be come alive.

Their breath heating up the room, suffocating me.

The twisted faces thereon mock me down.

And the jodhpuri red turbaned man from the April calendar looks on.

His frozen eyes seeing me through.

And the empty bed right next to mine, no I don’t even look at it.

The skull, the skeleton, the broken bones, I can handle them.

It is the moths buzzing over them, their wings flapping that I can’t take.

So, I bury myself deep inside the bedspread.

I hear the hovering for some time.

And then silence takes over.

Pin drop silence.

Come on, it was just a call, I tell myself.

Every day. Every night. Before I go to bed.

An errant call. You don’t have to lose your sleep over it. Or sanity.

Just a call.

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