It is always better to say nothing than to say something that is obvious and hurt me. Did he do it deliberately? To shoo me away? Or did he really feel that way? I will never know...This is one thing that would forever itch my mind and keep me sleepless in my sleep. For even in my sleep I hear those words, and the vibration of his voice when he said them. It wasn’t something I did not know, yet I just didn’t want to hear it from him. I thought I conveyed him the message through the fear I hid in my eyes.
Summer came with a lot of fanfare. Gold rays spurted through blinds. The clothes on the rail whipped the smell of frizzling grass indoors. Everything around grew dewy including the people. Ice tinkled every half hr onto trays and into glasses. The bottle openers were out. So were the flower pattern hankies to mop liquid black salt off tanned gorges. Through the windows you could see everyone doing a jig towards the shade.
In spite of all the gaiety by default, there came some clammy news. The Cricket World Cup. To a prototype Gingerbread boy in happy self-imposed exile this doesn’t forebode good. Well, cause people snack as they watch wickers swing and wickets down.
For a minor flashback, the original Gingerbread boy dodged quite a few and ended in a fox’ tummy. Well, all I can say is, thank god the cow didn’t get him. Regurgitation is quite unsavory. You see, gingerbread is what you call a one-time instant crunchy flavour. But I digress. I, the new prototype outran the baker, landed in an assorted cookie jar of a premium kind making its way across oceans as Monty Panesar’s gift to a girl named Sumthnwinder. Luckily for me I escaped the gorging process. And to cut a long story short I made it into the hands of a kind small-town Dhaba owner who had no appetite for anything but butter chicken. A loving keeper indeed and it grew mutual. Every morning I get a quick scrape and some pink and Ajanta blue squeezed on that get me looking iced and garish.
Even though hopes for the Hockey World Cup for India belonged only to the zany, the rest of the townspeople didn’t need no hope to smack up snacks to stack up their racks while glued to the only LCD TV in town i.e. at my keeper’s place.
Where do I fit into this easy-maintenance lot? Once in a while there’d be a shortage of kurkure or jilebi as they watched scuttling figures and made the occasional remark about sexy calf muscles. It seems focus is a snack. And when that’s out restlessness sets in and the sexy calf muscles can be damned! At tense moments as these, there’d be the rabid eye glancing my way, itching to snap me in two. But my keeper’s surly appearance by my side would squelch even the teeniest sign of mutiny. This was last year.
And now, The Cricket World Cup! It is BIG! And so would be the snacking. My keeper had been brooding the past one week and looking my way with a sense of guilt, apprehension, love and I think I noticed even hunger and faint curiosity for the unknown. Things weren’t ok as always between my gracious keeper and me. The early morning shaves had grown shoddy, the icing runny. It’s as though he just wanted to be over with me ASAP. For a gingerbread boy, I have quite a heart. It hurt I tell you.
My eyelid started ticking. There was a grudging animosity in the air. My keeper’s shoulder slid to a spooky slouch. His eyes and fingers constantly thumbed the snack racks and the quantity ledgers respectively. There were blood-shot sneaks taken my way with a drooly leer. But like menthol induced whistles there were those short bursts of love that came through. Yet, I felt day by day that I never knew him ever.
On a starry night, I was taken out of my casing for one of those nightly treats, where I could sit on his lap and trace patterns that never end with them sparkly. This time however, the unrest of many days didn’t allow excitement to stir. But once out, swinging my crispy legs off his knee, it was hard not to get comfortable. My eyes roved the silver. A sudden draft nipped my iced nose. And that’s when I noticed the utter stillness with which he sat. Right then, he took me onto his palm and peered at me wonky-eyed as I looked at him with wild hope characteristic of doom. And he said, “Sadly, it won’t be me who first tastes you, biscuit.”
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