The buck never stops

I got a WhatsApp "punch" in the morning today. "You are not writing anymore" it said. Well -- true and false. I was writing ... It's still not every day, but it's there. But I was writing in random pieces of paper, in my old tattered diary that takes the weight of my body more than it takes the weight of my thoughts. I realized I write the best in the mornings. So I wrote. As usual, I never got around to finish it. But to keep this blog up, alive and running, I am going to keep my promise of writing a story -- incomplete stories in this case but beginning of something.

So here goes the first one.

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Rashida Jamal was the last person to leave the room -- like every other day, She sat there and looked around. It always felt bigger and calmer with no one around her. She had a tingly feeling in her feet that urged her to get up. she always defied her inner voice -- the one that would yell at the top of her voice. Only if the world could hear her scream -- they would think she was crazy. But maybe she was.

Rashida looked around the room once again. They changed the flowers this week but besides that, there was no change. The benches were still the same and the posters on the walls were probably older than her oldest students. She liked the silence after everyone left the room. The silence was calming. It hugged her -- sat beside her like an understanding friend -- waiting for her to speak but never nagging. At home, however, it was eerie. At home, she was the nagging friend to the silence that covered her house. She wanted it to break. She would call her children and talk about this and that. She heard the disinterest in their voices, but she had learned to overlook them.Her husband would talk to her too -- but only in grunts and nods. In twenty-seven years, he was probably so used to her that he did not think it was important to acknowledge her as an individual.

Every day when the school bell rang, Rashida would feel her heart sinking. One more day passes by -- One more day closer to the end of this year when she will retire. Rashida remembered when she had just started working as a high school English teacher. 

"I can't wait to grow old and retire" She would tell her friends. Today she could go back in a heartbeat. Today she cannot imagine a life which is not spent in the world of Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, and Cummings. Maybe she was too used to it, maybe, this school was an escape for her or maybe she was just scared. 

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This is a pure unadulterated version of what I wrote while I was half asleep and half nagging my own self to get up and get ready for work. This is all I could manage in between the thoughts of  "I should get up" "I don't want to get up" "I shall work from home today" "But then I will have to cook" and  lastly "I am still sleepy".

As I promised, I will write my other incomplete here and maybe I will witness a miracle and see a story completing itself.