Burning Absence

There were these old newspapers on the table almost golden with age and yellow with dust with a lamp by the corner and a diary covered in fading black for company. There were his spectacles on the desk, only the glass was not tinted…with anything.
The paraphernalia had become one with the table on which it lay and yet stood out so distinctly. They say that is what your relationship should be with the world…you must blend and yet retain your identity.
It was the quietest room I had visited in a long time, yet throbbing with sounds all of which can be heard only by the sixth sense. There was a calm, a very disturbing one and the sheer silence almost had a baritone voice. This room hadn’t been opened in years…there was nothing here that belonged to anyone who had any use of it, not a soul entered it except the mice who think that all such rooms have been bequeathed to them.
That day he had walked out in a hurry, he had read something but he wouldn’t say. He had rushed out to help someone he knew, he said he would explain later. The explanation never came and neither did he, this was the night they had set fire to the neighborhood. The newspaper was fresh, the news old and the fire will forever continue to cause more casualties than any newspaper can report in a day.

Sanchita Johri