Indispire# and the tears never stopped

Ananya’s parents had shifted with her brother in U.S. Their old home in town was now locked since no one lived there. Her parents had left their home to Ananya’s care. It had been a year already that Ananya was putting off her visit to the place. Finally she decided to take sometime off and get done with the much required dusting of the place.

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Away from the busy city, it was a small town with very less population. The people here were simple and welcoming. It was where she had spent better part of her childhood. It had all the memories of her childhood. She stepped into the house. There was a lot to do and she could not retire to resting before getting done with all that was there to be done. Every now and then, something or the other would make her nostalgic, but she would dispel all the thoughts so as to finish the cleaning sooner. Perhaps she had become mechanical and quite a workaholic over all these years without even realizing it.

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It was almost evening before she could finish with the work.

Sitting by the window, Ananya is holding a cup of hot ginger tea in her hands. She is observing the hot vapours rising up into the air. After a certain height, these vapours start disappearing, as if losing their existence. Ananya wonders if her own life was just like those vapours perhaps. After a certain length of life, life had actually started disappearing or so she had thought.

It had been a while she had spent time like this. Just sitting back and doing nothing, thinking about nothing, just taking a look at the simplest things surrounding her.  She used to do it more often when she was young.

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The sun was setting and the light slowly receding. Listening to the sounds of birds, Ananya wondered, how long and rare it had been that she paid attention to these melodies of nature.

The clock of her mind took her twenty years back in time. ..

She was just sweet sixteen back then. She used to be joyous, happy and self-absorbed all the time. She used to run after the butterflies, tried to catch the flying birds, sit on the rocks and watch the sunset. She had fanciful imaginations of some magical wand changing the colors of the sky with a spell. She had a love for the art that she could see in every form of nature. She loved painting and coloring in her teen years.

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Things had changed now. She was in her late thirties, always juggling between her several roles, always trying to keep balance between her personal and professional life.  She was a caring and loving mother, an affectionate wife, a responsible daughter-in-law. But something was lacking. And it was ‘that Ananya’ that she used to be in teen years. The child in her was dying perhaps. In hustle and bustle of her professional life, and a demanding personal life, she hardly ever spent some “me-time” that she was so used to spending every now and then. She scarcely painted now. Life was just set in a routine which hardly ever changed.

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She looked around the room. The old canvas was still lying on the stand in a corner of the room, waiting to be filled with the colors of nature. She picked up the canvas and colors and set out to the garden outside.

Leaves were ruffling with the mild breeze, colorful flowers eliciting the inner joy. There was inspiration everywhere, in the changing colors of setting sun, in the flight of birds returning to their nests at the dusk hours, the gradually approaching twilight, the deserted roadside, the flower strewn pathways, and the empty canvas.

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Ananya had long been out of touch with the art of painting. She had nothing particular in mind. But her fingers had found the inspiration. Her fingers were drawn into a rhythm so natural and automatic. Her heart was full, and it was emptying itself into the empty canvas.

The lines, the curves were automatically taking shape. The colors were secretly whispering into her ears and urging to be filled in.

From the empty canvas to the most delightful painting, it was nothing short of a journey. A journey of soul, that overwhelmed her. The Ananya that was almost lost was found again in the colors of the canvas. She did not infuse life into the colors of canvas, rather it was those colors of the canvas which infused her lost life into her.

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It was a triumph over the mundane, the torpor that was slowly occupying her, the child in her was revived again. It was a feeling of overwhelming joy that brought tears into her eyes, the tears that never stopped.

Image Source: Pinterest.com

This post is written for indispire # Write a story ending with '... and the tears never stopped' #tears