The Resolve

The Resolve


The sunlight fell inside the room through the window. It was a square window two feet by two feet. It was morning. He had a task to complete. He had to keep silent and think of what he understood of what they had told him, for a while. The walls were painted blue. The sunlight fell inside in a square beam. He remembered his earlier home. There were windows in it too. The rooms were all windy and airy. He was carrying a thought. He had carried a thought all along. He often wondered what would happen to the house after they left and shifted to a new place.

He was now seated in a lounge of hotel waiting for his job interview. On top right corner a TV played. A sports channel was on. A race was being shown. There were others too, seated and talking, drinking coffee. He had applied for a field job. Secretly he was not very eager for it. He would anytime prefer the comforts of an office job. He liked office jobs. The big companies had even better furnished offices, with all the latest floorings and upholstery. He was an oil expert. He once sat in the office lounge alone, of an oil company, looking at the blank white wall. What looked to him that there might have been a window, now sealed by bricks and made into a solid wall. A cabin had been built adjacent to the wall for a person to sit in.

A flight of stairs led to the office. The last flight led to a door which always remained closed. It was painted green. It probably opened outside into a balcony above the road. To the right of it was another which opened and led a flight of stairs to the roof from outside. The door to the next at right angles to it was the door to the office of the oil company.

He would play on the stairs. He learnt there to climb the stairs. It was there that he had practised climbing the stairs. He would not be allowed to go and play on the flight of stairs going up to the roof. There remained his playground for many years.

The door of the office was painted pink in plastic enamel with a logo of the company pasted on it. The door was springed at the hinges and shut by itself. The second door was now sealed by bricks and made into a wall.

The little girl watched him with her blue eyes as he prepared to get own of the bus. He was returning from the interview. He watched the houses as they passed by. He reached his stop, disembarked and took a connecting bus to where he lived. He got down and came home.

He was not very pleased with the interview and had pondered long over it when he had returned. All the way throughout his mind had been on the interview.

He remembered himself being in his father’s laps on a by lane close to where they lived in a city in another far off country. His father had been talking to him something which he did not understand. They all talked of it. They said then ‘It is coming’ and it did. It was the time when they were facing the question of their rights over the property. Their properties were being taken over.

He looked at the house diagonally standing in the bye lane when he had grown up a bit and tried to recollect. He went blank. He could not think. He could just remember of them talking of him going for a particular interview….

He recollected it being a very routine meeting. He had left in a state of indecision.

He was in the earlier house playing in the rear.

He had not put his demands.

His mind had gone to another similar door.

He now remembered. Stepping outside and taking three photos. Of the trees, houses, roads etc. He remembered being once told ‘This is the place where you shall need to click’. He was small then. He had all the time wondered how he would click.

He now remembered being very small and they being moved away from their own houses in their own country. Some one had clicked every move of theirs. He had watched him silently. He had resolved he would not tell anyone. He would one day click thrice in that place he had resolved, he remembered.