Chp 635. Triggering Memories

So I'm currently stuck at home on a medical leave because I have a badass swollen eye. At first I thought it was an eye infection, but the doctor told me there's a boil inside my eyelid, caused due to strain because of continuous work in front of a monitor.

The doctor told me to take rest and not to sit in front of a computer for a while, so here I am, restfully sitting diagonally across my computer as I type this blog post :D :P

Sitting at home all alone and not able to play any computer games or watch TV shows is boring as hell. But I ended up noticing one thing I never did before. Every day, at around 3 in the afternoon, the sun's reflected glare from the solar panel on the rooftop of the apartment opposite my flat shine directly into my kitchen!

Other days, I might have just passed by without noticing it, but today, I did notice it, and the silhouette reflection on my kitchen wall was beautiful and kinda surreal in a phantasmagoric way.

I took a pic.

Beautiful right?

See, if I was a poet like some of my awesome blogger friends, I'm sure I would have already been inspired to write a poem about it. Something about being trapped by the shackles of inhumanity, or our souls reaching out for a ray of hope…

But I don't have that in me.

Instead, the above photos took me on a flashback, a strange blast from the past when I suddenly remembered my hostel days back in Mizoram.

My parents packed me off to a boarding school in Calcutta when I was just in class 3, but before that, they admitted me to a boarding school in Aizawl just to see whether I could cope with the separation and loneliness.

It was JJ School, Bawngkawn. Jehovah Jireh School. The above photos reminded me of my alma mater maybe because of the color and tone of the silhouette or the somber mood and ambience surrounding my shadow. It reminded me of the spooky horror stories we used to hear in that hostel, and how I might have got our hostel warden fired!

Yeah that's right. I think somebody lost his job because of me :(

Our hostel was co-ed. Boys and girls slept together in the same dorm. We were all kids back then, innocent and playful, and so there was nothing strange or weird about sleeping next to an opposite sex. There were around 15-20 of us hostellers, all on double bunk beds, packed inside a single room, and our warden's bed was next to the toilet in the same room. The adjoining room was occupied by the headmaster and his family.

On certain nights, our warden would tell us ghost stories, and we would all huddle around him on one bed as he would tell some of the most terrifying tales to us. And even though we were terrified, we loved the stories at the same time. Remember, we were young and naive. But many of us ended up being scared of a lot of things.

When I went home for the weekend (I think it was once a month), I guess my folks noticed how jittery I had become of the dark, or even afraid of going to the loo alone, and I finally told them there were these really scary stories our warden used to tell us in the night.

When I was admitted back to the hostel the following Monday, our warden was no longer there. All his belongings were packed and gone!

Our headmaster's daughter U Mami moved in to that empty bed and she became our new warden from that day onward.

Thinking back about that incident now, I can't help but think it was because of me that our warden was fired. Because I snitched about him to my parents. Even though I cannot recollect the name of that warden, I do remember he loved us very much, and we all loved him. And I don't think he would have left without saying goodbye to us.

Perhaps it is true what they say about certain sounds or images that can make you recall long forgotten memories. In my case, it is the two images above that triggered my memories, and I really hope I wasn't the reason our warden was fired. Perhaps it was another parent who complained. Or maybe he wasn't fired at all, and that he left voluntarily. Ahh the things we think of when we are sick.

That's my post for today.

Hope you like the two photos above. Cheers.