Growing up

Here is Nandini, making an appearance once again on my blog. The third episode from the series of ‘A day in the life of En’. Some more slice of life instances from a girl who’s fondly known as ‘En’ amongst friends. Caught between a past and the present, watch Nandini battle it through like a braveheart one more time.

En was enjoying her free time at home, painting her toe nails. Right then, there was a knock on the door.
‘What timing!’ she thought.
Peering through the peep hole, she was trying to catch a glimpse of someone who was relatively shorter. A few strands of hair is all that caught her eye.
She tried harder by standing on her toes this time, avoiding the paint from getting smudged in the struggle. Still nothing.
She was a little skeptical now to open the door, ‘Is there someone really that short? or is someone just playing a prank?’ She was dreading the latter. Lost deep in thought, she heard the knock again, this time shaken and left more cold. She thought to herself, ‘Should I?’
With her heart beating heavily, she looked at the broken chain hanging over the knob on her door thinking, ‘I should get that one repaired… What have I been thinking?’
Slowly, En opened the door and there stood the biggest surprise. A little angel fallen from above. She looked at En with the most loving eyes En had ever seen. And a question shot right back at her, as the little girl uttered, “Who are you?”
En smiled and thought to herself, how she had never managed to find the perfect answer to that one. She replied, “I don’t know… Who do you think?”
The little girl looked deep into En’s eyes and retorted, “My guardian angel.”
En had heard that before. She took a closer look at the kid standing before her in a lavender layered dress, and within an instant, flashbacks flooded her vision. She was all of six years of age, walking through a lonely corridor, and right then, a known face had appeared and offered to help. Holding his hand firmly, she had repeated after him… ‘You’re my guardian angel’.
Still shaken from the horrors of the events that had followed, where she was not just stripped off her clothes, but also her dignity, En was broken from her thoughts as she stared at the vacant corridor before her. The little girl was gone. She had outgrown the frilly dresses, but the wounds had grown deeper with age too.
En stood there with a face that had been drained out of expression. Quietly turning back, she shut the door behind her, telling herself, ‘That’s the last time I’m speaking to that empty corridor’.

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