The Phone Ring

                                On receiving the news of the arrival of the boy's parents we all were standing outside  in the corridors, anticipating big tears and loud cries or atleast some 'action'. There was none. We expected our hostel warden would be hackled or physically manhandled but there was no such commotion. She lost her husband to the country early in her married life and he was her only reason to be alive after that. With perfect features of his father, she found her beloved husband smiling through his mischiefs. His thinking, his reasonnings were all well ahead of his age and thus he managed to wiggle out of a tight corner if he was ever caught for a mischief. Excelled in studies, did well in sports nd finally got through 'hell' and came here to iit.

                                She had always had her fair share of altercations with god, born with looks unfit for her family's economic background, an attitude unfit for her orthodox parents and loved by a man whose parents considered her unfit for all the above reasons. They thus ran off and married, no honour killing this time though. They had started living a happy life with each other. Her life shifted an upward gear with his arrival and just as she started to have second thoughts about her enimocity with him that she received a phone call. A funeral later she had stopped beleiving in him altogether and also made the 'little him' an atheist. If she was blessed it was just with an indefatigable heart. She started picking up those bits and shreds and just as she was about to make a b'ful collage she again got a phone call...

                              For three days and three nights she sat on the ganga ghat for the divers to find his body, for three days her hopes were alive to find him there, somewhere. Strayed might be but safe and sound. On the fourth day the divers succeeded but the god failed. She didn't identify the body but meekly surrendered to it. He was given a funeral along with all his belongings and then a splash later the phone again rang but no one was there to pick it this time, no one...