It was supposed to be a long journey and it was; ten long hours. In the early hours of the journey, I saw the girl who wept.
Short curly hair, striped pants, jeans-fabric jacket and perhaps some green shirt beneath, white strap-on shoes, a bracelet, dreamy eyes and a sleepy face, seated royally in her mother's lap, was this girl who sat silent. Eagerly looking out the window at the green colour flying by. I was too busy with the luggage to notice anything else about her for a while. Fifteen minutes later, when everything was settled like suspensions in an uncleaned fish tank, a tear rolled down her face.
One after one, they rolled down like rain drops on a window pane. Everything was silent except the typical noise of the running train with all of its crackling and hammering. Well, actually, even that sound seemed to silent for the tears trickling down her face. A moment later, her mother's hand felt the raindrop that dropped from her dream. In a hurry, she looked at her face and asked, "What happened?" The girl was three years old, tops. There was no reply, just more tears and uneasiness. The mothers held her close to herself, looked at her and asked the same question, again. The father, too, joined in. There was still no reply from the girl. It was tough to see why she was crying, why there were raindrops on a bright day. Its often hard to see the cloud inside, isn't it? She kept weeping, tear after tear. Mother and father had no clue, I had no clue, the rest did not take heed. After some more tears, the mother asked, "Anna gurthosthunnaada?" The girl nodded lightly, as if it was a crime to admit that. She missed her brother, so much that she had wept slowly; slow enough to let each tear shout out the feeling inside. She was a girl of three who could not pinpoint what exactly was making her cry. She could not understand the complexity of the relationship she held with another person she was taught to call 'Anna.' That day, perhaps, she finally understood what it meant to truly call someone that, to truly call someone a brother. I guess she spoke to her brother over the phone, a minute later; I'm not sure. But about half an hour later, she was back to being the three-year old kid.
The divine serenity of a sibling relationship brought out by the tears of the girl who wept.
