FranKophone

No longer do I look forward To wearing my new birthday dress. Impeccably wrapped gifts no longer excite me. I do not cut cakes with numeric candles glowing on it. I ignore most messages, pings and tweets, That remind me of my birthday. With each passing festival I see new trends in the market. Playing with colors or fire is not "my thing" now. I wish no one comes home with a box of sweets in hand. I wish not to be wished at all. I loathe parties thrown by friends, Their birthdays and their weddings. Their house-warming and their baby-showers and their successes. Sipping a drink in hand and Thinking. Reminiscing about chances I had but did not take. Wondering about how lost I am. Where did I lose it ? At fifteen - when I was blissfully unaware ? Or at seventeen ? When I did not know how to do it. Or at twenty one ? When I failed to realize what exactly to do. Sadly I stopped counting after that.

December 1991. A small township in India . A new departmental store had just opened. A little girl of about three years. Very mischievious. Pushes the stack of buckets and they tumble. Reason : She needs the biggest toy available in the store. She can’t find one, much to her disappointment. Her mother, naturally embarrassed, puts forth a condition. “You have to write A to Z as well as 1 to 10. Only then you’ll get this gun ”,she said, pointing towards a two-feet long, sturdy, toy-gun. Her eyes gleam,then shimmer and then she rushes home immediately. A quick glance at all the letters of the alphabet and then she sits down with a pencil. It was the first time she wrote all those twenty-six letters together. The girl’s father came home. She proudly displayed “the fruit of her labour”. No mistakes. Smiles followed. The next morning she finds the gun on her bed. Squeals with delight. Bliss. Today that little girl is in search of another gun.