This Boy Across The Street

by Gauri Trivedi

[box]“The art of reading faces is yet unknown to me but the adolescent frame with an elytrous lure has its own story to tell,” writes Gauri Trivedi, of a teenager she has seen. This is the story of that boy across the street.[/box]

I see him every day as I pass by where he resides. Golden hair and clear blue eyes, he is a passerby’s delight. The smile looks like it must have captured a million hearts and the dazzle in his eyes could brighten any day. The space he inhabits illuminates life, rousing a mirage of kinds. He is no ordinary guy, this boy across the street.

“Don’t you feel cold on snowy nights like these?”, “Do you play an instrument or spend all your time on the field?” As days go by I want to stop and have a word, ask him some questions, know more about him. Scented candles, vibrant flowers, a hat and a baseball glove, surrounded by all his favourite possessions, he has everything he needs. A guitar sits beside him for a couple of days before disappearing inaudibly.

The art of reading faces is yet unknown to me but the adolescent frame with an elytrous lure has its own story to tell. “I bet you were in college and in love with a pretty girl,” I talk to him from a distance as I revisit that fateful night again and watch the catastrophe unfold in front of my eyes.

A rush of tires, a screeching noise and loud banging thrice, one after the other at an interval almost rhythmic. Thereafter, complete silence. No cries for help, none howling in pain. Somehow the eerie stillness after that loud noise aroused my suspicion. Staying right across the road, I couldn’t stop myself from peeping out of the window. There it lay, a monstrous four wheeler with its headlights upside down. A small crowd had started to gather but I was afraid to step out, my own tryst with the road not so long ago forbade me from doing so. Soon enough the air was filled with sirens and aid which had started to arrive.

There wasn’t much I could do but say a quick prayer for the injured and close the drapes. A general curiosity about the  cause   and an optimistic thought that many passengers escape terrible looking accidents with minor injuries were the  last things  on my mind as I slept through the rest of that night. Funny, I did not dwell on any other  outcome of that crash even for a minute.

As soon as I woke up I knew something was amiss, the roads lay silent as if still mourning the night before. The entire lane was cordoned off and an investigation was being carried on. The hours passed and the boundaries came off, traffic that side began to pick up. As I put on the local news for weather, it all came around. The “Unfortunate Roll Over” as they called it was indeed talk of the town.

Two boys and a girl, yes they were all 17, went to a party together to enjoy the summer fun. With faltered steps and in high spirits, they left at midnight in an attempt to get home. You should call mom for a ride, a friend who saw them leaving remarked. Home is just a mile away, came a cocky retort. The trio supposed they were invincible as the young always do; one of them even more so as he got behind the wheel.

The rest of the minutes became immortal as they found their place in a police file. Sealed and signed just like the young couple’s fate who stepped into the car with him.

There was a rush of adrenaline inside as the car sped past empty roads. The driver turned a corner way too fast and that’s when it flipped over. Bouncing on the vacant path it crossed the median doing somersaults; a one, a two and almost a third, landing in the grass on the wrong side. A blink of an eye and it was all over.

He was holding her hand across the barrier, facing the back seat where his girl was seated. The jolt and the hurt came later, much after the shock of being thrown around mercilessly. The girl was the only one who tried to scream but all that came out was a whimper. She hung on to his hand first in desperation then in vain, the force of misfortune stronger than her grip.

A prohibited endeavour followed by a bad judgment, and two out of three, were now a bloody mess. The driver, he hurt where the airbag struck, the girl she bled from a  shattered window.  They suffered but they survived. The people who came with an ambulance said the only one who did not suffer was the boy with the golden hair. He did not have to be pulled out from the jumble. He did not have a single scar on him. The passenger door remained half open, a shoe lay beneath in the grass, a sign that he was there. The restraint of the seatbelt relinquished in the fervour to hold hands, nothing to confine him when thrown out on impact.  An instant death, the paramedics ruled, as if it helped to know.

That evening echoes in my mind like yesterday, exigent to put aside. The family, the friends, the people he loved, drove up to see his final place. Sobs and tears filled the air. A grief that touched even the coldest of hearts engulfed the place. It didn’t take long to spot her in the weeping crowd, the mother whose plight was the hardest to bear. She cried unashamedly, begging for him to come back. It was as if her life ended at that very spot. “He was so young, he was so young,” was all that came out of her, nearly incoherent in distress.

It’s been a whole year since he came here and never went back. He isn’t always alone like today as it appears to be.  People come to see him and talk to him in whispers. Most of them young, a few of those old; also comes a woman who never wants to leave. She rushes to him, calls out for him, aching inside to be with him. She sits there and talks and touches him a lot. When it is time to go she needs a helping hand. A few of his friends come here too. None stay there for long, maybe he is a reminder of how it all went wrong.

A silent spectator; a distant sufferer; a total stranger to him. I never heard of him before and still don’t know his name. The lost youth, the life ahead is a fraction of what I mourn.  The empty nest of the one who gave birth, her loss is what I grieve. It is the mother in me that feels the pain and sometimes cries for him, hugging my children closer as I see his smiling face.

Pic : ergonomic – http://www.flickr.com/photos/psyarch/

Gauri Trivedi is a former business law professional who makes the law at home these days. A Mom to two lovely daughters, her days are filled with constant learning and non- stop fun. All of her “mommy time” goes into writing and finds itself on her blog pages http://messyhomelovelykids.blogspot.com/ and  http://pastaandparatha.blogspot.com/ and if she is not writing she is definitely reading something!

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