I Couldn'T Love You

I walk across the deserted corridor of my large ancesteral house. Its mid noon and everyone is lulled by the sleepiness of summer. I see the dry leaves falling from the trees in our garden and gathering at the doorstep. And just near the entrance in the verandah, lies grandpa's rocking chair. Its never removed from its place and seems to us like an elderly member of family. It wasn't many years ago that we couldn't picture this verandah and the chair without grandpa. But in last few years all have got used to his phyaical absence. I sit there at the steps, drawned in flashback. Images of me with all my cousins circling grandpa and listening to his stories, playing with him in the garden, teasing him by hiding his glasses are flashing infront of my eyes. Just like the reels placed in front of a projector. Grandpa used to be our best friend. We were not that close to our parents as much as we were to grandpa. He was everthing, our teacher, mentor, storyteller, and armour who protected us from our parents' scoldings. But then, slowly the birds grew up and left the nest one by one. We all went to different cities for higher studies. We visited him lesser, he grew old faster. Now whenever he insisted to stay for one more day we would frown, he was afterall an old fashioned fella. Our friends, career, modern lifestyle was far more important than our old primitive grandpa. We started visiting even less. And then, one call, the man who loved us more than anything was gone. Gone without seeing the faces of his beloveds for one last time. And irony was, we didn't feel that sad, we forgot him soon. Forgeting him was easy cuz he didn't matter anymore. But now after all these long years, when I've revealed the selfishness of our modern world, I realise how pure his primitive love was. Now I wish I could sit by his side and share with him all my griefs, that no one has time to listen. Now I feel how bad we did to him. I regret, I regret not loving him till end, though he loved us beyond that. -Bhumika katyayan