Farewell
From the Farewell by Tanuja Pattnaik
Teasa went to watch a thriller movie with her friends earlier that morning. She was thinking about the twist and turns of that movie lately. While on her way back home, she noticed a couple of things. An old man was burning some pieces of paper just in front of his house. He was carrying a very sad face and he was very tired too. On the other hand, Teasa noticed a little girl was enjoying the company of her father as well as the chocolate ice-cream that she was holding in her hand. Teasa wanted to write a story about the possible reasons for that old man’s sadness. “Why was he burning all the pieces of paper outside? I am surely going to write about the possible reasons behind his sorrow.” After dinner she went to bed.
Now the content below has been derived from her notebook about her dreams. She writes her dreams just after waking up in the morning. In the dream, she was walking down a street. She suddenly found two strangers following her. “Something is not right” she thought. However those strangers were looking at her as if they had known her for ages. She panicked and tried to run away. All on a sudden she turned around and found her friend Alex dead on the ground. Before she tried to look up, she happened to notice the massive shadows of those two men and didn’t dare to. With her eyes more than closed, she stood up and ran away. The next thing that she remembered was that she was in her school playground. She ran towards her classroom to find if her friend was there or not. She found her class teacher who used to teach them in kindergarten. “Why are you here?”, She asked her teacher. “This is your first class, isn’t it?” teacher replied. “No, I know you for more than 10 years” she said. Then, she cried a lot, hugged her teacher and told the story about Alex in a shivering voice. “Alex is here” teacher replied. Now she could see a three year old Alex right in the third row of her classroom. He was playing with all his friends.
Then the school bell rang and she woke up. After waking up, she found a letter that Alex gave her at school. She took that letter and didn’t open it at first, because she couldn’t take her mind off her dream. There were a lot of possibilities. Being a connoisseur of dreams, she went on thinking about the possibilities. She noticed particularly two things while coming back home from school. A happy child and a sad old man. Was the dream something to do with those activities? The old man was burning his memories from the past. He is a writer and after getting old, he doesn’t want to reveal his writings. Whatever that was, he was pretty upset about what he was doing. What about that child? She was experiencing a pretty new world of joy and happiness with her father. Alex was found dead and again she happened to see him alive as a child. “What was it all about?” she asked herself.
“Alex, Alex … ” She murmured and all on a sudden her attention was diverted towards the letter. The letter said the following.
“From the Principal
You are cordially invited to the farewell party of the school, the last time. Wishing you all the best in your future endeavors.”
Now she could figure out the bitter truth that her subconscious mind showed her at night with a thrill. The love from her first teacher, the fear of separation, the excitement of a new life led her watch that dream. The short-term thought of those real time events made some sense to her. It was the instant impression, not all the possibilities. At last she concluded
“I hope, I am going to my school tomorrow as a three year old in another universe.”