The Stranger

The bird is chirping. Happily. It is waiting for its mother to come and feed it. It can see the mother soaring up in the sky. When the mother bird finally comes to feed her child, she can see her baby trying to flutter its cute little wings and it is opening and closing it’s mouth. The mother bird could see that her kid is ready to tackle the world on its own. No wonder there! Animals and birds never change with time. Only humans do.

Everything is silent when I get up from my beautiful sleep. I look up into the clock. Oh! It is 10! Grandma is going to be very upset. I don’t want her to be like that from morning. Boy! She is the sweetest grandma one could ever get. But even she could get grumpy at times.
I take my sweet time brushing up my teeth. Then I go in search of grandma. She is not in the kitchen… not in the living room. Ya! I see her. She is sitting in her favourite chair and sewing something. I take the neglected  Mr.Teddy from below the couch and having done it successfully go to her. She embraces me.
“Did you have your milk dear?”
“No grandma! I got up just now.”
“Wait here you little rascal! I’ll get you some milk and bread.”
She went into the kitchen. I sat in her chair and saw the needle and thread twined together. How something unrelated with thread and clothes is needed to make one fine cloth! I was praising my own philosophical knowledge when she returned with my unappealing breakfast. I’d rather go on fast to have it. But I had it. Adults have the ability to make the young do what they want! It is for good they say.
I sit near her on the floor and start playing with Mr.Teddy. We were on the verge of completing the beautiful castle. How wonderful it looked! Wonderful…. Something…yesterday
I thought something else was wonderful too!! What was it?
Mr.Teddy?  No. He is always the same. What was it? I shrunk my face and eyebrows in deep thought. Ya! I got it!
Grandma was giving me a weird look. Who better than her to clear my doubt? I can’t ask her to accompany me in playing angry birds. But certainly I can ask her this.
“Grandma?”
“Yes dear.”
“Yesterday, after dinner, you went to bed early. But I was not able to sleep. I was reading Gulliver’s travels. I was so deep into it I forgot to see the time. It must be very late I think, because I could hear the howl of the dogs. Then I was going to my bedroom when the door opened.
Two persons entered. One was a lady and the other was a man. I looked at them without even blinking. That lady, I didn’t even ask her name, she came near me.
She knelt down and looked straight into my eyes. She asked, “Why haven’t you gone to bed yet? What are you doing at this unlikely hour?”
I wanted to ask the same to her. But I couldn’t get myself to say it. Instead I said,”
“I was reading.”
She looked at the man beside her and then looked at me and said, “So you like reading?”
“Yes! I love it.”
“Today has been my lucky day!” saying this she lifted me up from the floor and took me to my bedroom and sat near me in my bed. Yesterday I slept so peacefully, grandma!
The reason I told you this is because I thought that the lady’s eyes was beautiful. I don’t know why grandma!”
Grandma looked at awe when I said my encounter with the lady. She asked, “Didn’t you ask her who she was?”
“No grandma!”
Grandma beckoned me near her. I got up slowly from the floor and dragging my toy with me, I went near her. “who were they grandma?’
She had tears in her eyes. Eyes!
My eyes widened. She, my grandma had the same eyes as that of the lady!!
Without asking why, without knowing why, I had tears in my eyes too.