Glimpse of a story: "Savera"

I love mornings. Always did. Even in this humid and hot room in a semi-private ward of the hospital, which my father once owned. But they could throw me into the general ward and I couldn’t care less because, I’d still have my mornings. It was morning when I met her. I remember it as if it were yesterday: her disheveled apparel, hurricane hairstyle and ruddy stench. I love that image more and more with each passing breath and I nearly forget what I was doing that morning. Of course, my morning walks with my father were among my most painful adolescent experiences. But that’s the rule of life and religion: to get your shine, first grapple with grime. And so this lackadaisical youth, that was me, eventually found that I had in me that which loved her dress, that which loved her hair, that which loved her, that which loved mornings.
There goes off the six o’clock alarm. Not mine. It belongs to, used to belong to my roomie, Richard D’mello. So it is morning! And there goes off the natural alarm. It belongs to, still belongs to nature (at least as long as she is around). The buzz of this one is composed of the irksome chirping of seemingly a hundred birds shrouded within the foliage of the peepul tree right outside the window that WAS next to Richard’s bed. Someone told me that all that noise is a kind of feedback for the birds, helping them to maintain their population levels. I haven’t a clue as to how they do that but I do have something on how humans do that. They just die. Pop! There goes one. POP! There goes a huge one. Pop! There goes Richard. Pop! There goes Zubin, me.
The birds in the peepul tree seemed to be gradually popping off too ever since Sheila moved in with us. You can almost feel the decibels decreasing by one bird on a daily basis. Sheila was Richard’s cat. She’s more a cat with a personality, if you could ever have one like that. Her personality would probably match that of Richard’s wife but he hadn’t had one. I think that being able to share in bachelor bliss made sharing our room more tolerable for both of us. However, there were more things uncommon between us, especially his visitors, or guests, as he liked to refer to them. He had come in only a week ago but I can call him my friend. He was one of those people whom anyone can call a friend instantly. Maybe that’s why he had so many visitors. I had none.