The little girl with the cropped hair danced in the middle of the street. Her head was wrapped in a red cloth with butterflies. When she stopped, her face was red and feisty  like a child warrior taking over the world.

Her parents, standing close by, looked on with pride, as their daughter jumped around without a care in the world. They clapped along, uninhibited, because their child looked happy and perhaps that all they wanted. The rest of the people threw her a generous glance, maybe a small smile, and went along their lives.

Once she was done, she walked away, holding her parents' hand, saying something in a manic chatter, where her words tumbled out without pauses. The parents understood her perfectly. They asked her questions and made comments. It was clear that all she needed was the right audience. 

The city was beautiful today.

I whizzed by the sea face in a bright red car, that I pretended was my own while it wasn't, and I took in the magic that the sun creates while it's dipping into the ocean.

The colours were delectable; like honey and hay and diluted ink on handmade paper. The tyres made a crunching sounds on the gravel and the wind danced through my hair. The smell of the sea clung to my clothes and hugged my skin until I got home.

And by the time I reached, the breeze tugged at my scarf, like a little pet does when you get home after a long day.

It was comforting.

The milkman died in a car crash. The car crashed into him. "This morning, around 4" his wife told us while yanking out her green bangles because those signify marriage. "What do I do wearing these now?!" She said in Hindi, in a voice that was mostly drama lined with grief. The person next to her tried to pat her back but it seemed more like tap-tap-tap with some non-gentle sobs.

The people flocked to his home like garrulous women at a convenience store. The sounds of their bereaved voices carried all the way across the street. The sorrow and the ensuing depression manifested itself in loud shouts of protest. They screamed at God that He took away their friend, a man who was not only honest but also a generous soul during cricket matches being telecast on TV. 

His kids, X and Y because I don't know their names, sat in one corner looking stricken and largely uncomfortable by the constant show of affection towards them, a concept otherwise alien.

When they carried his body, a fight broke out about who got to carry him to the crematorium. The man with the loudest voice started chanting something but stopped abruptly because someone else wanted to chant too. In the end, it sounded like a terrible medley leaking out of a radio and the poor milkman looked small and insignificant on the stretcher, amidst the little army of people fighting for importance.

We are falling down a chute. You and I.

Or maybe it's a broken swing, but there is nothing below.

Your face is expressionless, like stone and ice all at once. Your hair is like an enthusiastic wave around you. Your hands are all spread out. You don't look at me. Or you do, but you pretend to not.

We aren't here, but we were a while ago. Our voices linger in the wind. It's like listening to yourself on tape. Strange. Muffled. Real, but only just. I can sense the laughter in your voice. I can feel the affection in your tone. My voice sounds exactly the way it does every time it meets yours. Unbearably happy. 

We are on the ground now, a few feet apart. Facing in different directions. Our minds are miles away from each other. 

We aren't dead because we never lived. We aren't here. We were never here. If you shut your eyes tight and open them, all you will see is barren land. 

It could be a shop floor. Or a factory. An industrial wreck.
But it's not. They have cheery seats and monkey faces. And free drinks. And us.

There is so much warmth at my table. My insides feel fuzzy and my cheeks glow. I can tell. They play music to which I mentally dance. I am wearing a straw hat and my heart on a sleeve. I am dancing around a tree, or a fire in the middle of the forest. The air is crackling with the enthusiasm of so many people.

There is affection and food and sweet concoctions that make their way to my head, slowing it to a point where everything feels huge and everything consumes me. There are random hugs and squeals. There is laughter that feels like being hugged in the cold.
There is us. At my table.

The bathrooms have nuts and bolts. Which is which. Which is either. Or none. We hop down the stairs with playful abandon, because we are chuffed and full and the trying week is now behind us.

We took the curtains down and look at each other with yellowing faces. Hers much older than mine, and clearly wiser too, given that it wasn't painted with the kind of anxiety that seemed to be bursting through my temples.

She looked at me while I folded the pastel green curtains and put them in big shopping bags. Her room now felt larger, brighter and altogether impersonal. The books from her shelves were now in cardboard boxes in my room. The wooden artifacts that dotted her walls were now taken down, put away. The table no longer held grocery lists and phone bills. 

You must no go, I wanted to say. I can't not have you live next door. 

But I didn't say anything. I just stood there, feeling like a child. 

We sat around making half-hearted attempts to empty out her home and life into containers and bags. As the light from outside went down and the room grew darker, the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling made a large ominous circle on her floor. 

I hugged her before I left, but I still couldn't quite find my words. 

I know. She said. And you know that I know. 

I came out and saw him. He was standing at the door, with his back to me.

You aren't supposed to be here. I felt my voice tear.

I am not, he replied.

They carried him away when I was 10. On a long, white sheet. They didn't have time for a stretcher. I called out to him then, but he didn't reply. I called out, again and again till all I heard were the remains of my sound flitting about.

Don't come in. I shouted at him. Don't come in now. It's too late. I have given up on you. You can't just come along and change all of that. 

His white shirt is dirty. 

He never came back. All that I saw was a bag of his clothes. A plastic bag, as if we went shopping for vegetables and didn't know where to put them. 

He went away. 

I told myself I was relieved. I can't deal with all this, I said.

Then I threw up in the bathroom and fell asleep on the floor.