“What day is Friday?” That was the clearest sentence I heard at the
crowded Calicut railway station on that rainy Sunday. I turned back to see a
small boy clinging on to a man’s shirt even though he was in a woman’s arms. I
started watching them and I could make out that the kid’s father was leaving
for Ernakulum and will be back on Friday and this scene happens on all Sundays.
My thoughts started flying back and it stopped at the backyard of a
house where an old man with snow white hair and 4 year old boy with curly hair
was feeding a cow.
It was me, with my grandfather. My father had just dropped me at my
grandpa’s place and left a while before. “Don’t cry, daddy will come on Friday
and take you back home”, grandpa tried to console me but I started asking “What
day is Friday?” .He could only laugh at it.
Sundays were painful for me for years. I went to kindergarten from my
grandparents’ house and I was with my parents only on weekends. I and
my dad would willfully miss the M.N.V.S bus which goes directly to my
grandparents house because dad knew that I liked to go in an auto rickshaw to
S.M Street first, buy some toys and then to grandpas house again in an auto
rickshaw. My loving grandparents, uncles, aunties, and my sweet cousin sister
treated me like a prince but Sunday nights I never slept peacefully. Even now
my uncles tell me that all through the week I use to ask them “what day is
Friday”.
Years later when I got my first job at Salem the painful Sundays started
again. It was tough to leave my home, my friends and my love at Calicut and go
to Salem on Sundays. The sound of the ‘City Travels’ bus still wakes me up some
nights. The trips to Salem continued for almost three years. After marriage I
was lucky to be in Calicut for 7 years.
Then came the Chennai trips and the painful trips continued for another
3 years
The whistle of the train brought me back to the railway station. Train
started moving and I jumped in. The little boy was all tears as he waved to his
daddy. I could feel wetness in my eyes. I thought about the five year old
little girl at my home who also doesn’t want me to go to Trivandrum on Sundays.
My painful Sundays still continues. It’s worst nowadays. Along with all that I
always had to leave back, there is a little heart that misses me silently. What
day is Friday, Why can’t it be tomorrow? I couldn’t stop asking myself.
