No answers to Chulbuli's questions!

After Kats's 'exams' got over she had a long list of things to do before leaving for Here. She walked with Shanti, Sanjeevani and Rekha from her hostel to Himadrija and Indigo's room in the hostel that is like so many miles away. The walk is like almost a walk through a jungle to reach another country, where on the way there is a brook(tiny version of river), big rocks, and monkeys, peacocks. Like the journey the nomads make.

Most of the times when she travels to Indigo and Hima's place, it is like a turning point, a point form where things change.While we were walking, I asked Kats, "Wouldn't it be fun if we could do this walking around everyday? See all the beauty around us." Kats rolled her eyes in reply, "And darling, who would attend the classes for me? The lizard in our wing's bathroom?" Lizard attending was not a bad option at all according to me, but for a few problems. No it is not Kats's desk partner, she doesn't have one, she refers to sit alone on the first bench in the corner of the class, it is the girls who sit behind her. Both Shanti and Rekha are scared of lizards. Also, to be able to take notes for Kats in her absence would be difficult for it(we don't know whether the lizard is a boy or a girl you see) with all the yummy distractions buzzing around, also to be able to talk in our language and ask the teacher the questions she has would need a long training.  After all of those thoughts I forgot to reply to her and I am sure she thought I had not solution to it. Before I could choose to speak about it, she spoke, "Chulbulli, you know something? If you played the same game everyday, you'll get bored too soon. Similarly if we do all this excursion everyday, it'll lose its charm. " Is it true what she said? Some games I have played everyday like hide and seek, but I am still not bored of it, what changed though was the people with whom I played. So.. is that its not just the journey but the people, the things, the sky, the moon everything that makes every journey different?

Later that night we sat in the balcony of the 'wing' of the hostel where her room is. For those who don't know about hostels, hostel is like mini home, without Mummy and Daddy, you have new and different family members. Some like to talk, some don't; some study in the same class, some don't; some are older than her, some younger, some as old as her. What is common in them all is, they have left their own families and traveled a large distance to learn. As for a wing, a wing  is a bunch of rooms that are close together, one after the other. In Kats's case, her wing has a door, their own bathroom, two basins and a balcony where the mango tree's branch spreads out its arms. 

So under the dark sky, with a few twinkling stars, and the dark green mango leaves hanging over our head as the cold winter was punching us I asked Kats that if she had the chance of doing what she really wanted to do, what she thought she really was sent to do by leaving everything now would she do it? She didn't reply! She was so silent that i could hear all the leaves above our heads rattle,  I even tried to count the number of rattles that the leaves made as she stood in silence. Then I thought maybe I asked a difficult question, so I asked her again, differently, "So if you were in a closed cold stone-made cave like room like the ones where the Flintstones live in, with a window, and there was a huge garden outside with flowers of the colour of the rainbow, and a pond with swans like in the fairy tales. What would you choose?" She was still very silent. I didn't know what was wrong with the question. She finally answered when 50 or more leaves had rattled, I think the tree was curious too. She said, 

"I would stay outside during the day play and enjoy. And at night would come back to the cave."

And then I understood what I forgot to ask her, what if she could choose only one? I asked her. And again there was silence. I started to count the stars, that is what daddy had taught me to do when I can't wait for something, and after that all I remember is black.