While the night slowly enveloped my native village, Patri in India, Paris was still shining bright. The desolate silence of an office evening gets broken by the incessant ringing of phone. It must be the time for the evening video call with Mumma. As I wind up the day and rush home, I could anticipate another ring coming. She surely has adapted to my whims, and the cutely annoying barrage of calls, now, has given way to mutually defined protocol of messages, voice calls and video calls in a particular order. The phone rings again but by now I’m home and we engage in our little chit chat about the day that was.
In the background, there are two very conspicuous noises. I allow myself to call them noises for want of a better word for something that touches my auditory senses and on which I have no control. First one is Papa talking and like forever, inciting, instigating and inspiring me to excel in whatever I do. Sometimes, I’m callously indifferent to it but that doesn’t discourage him a bit.
The second and slightly disturbing noise is that of intermittent gunfire, which has reached a crescendo after constant cease fire violations. Staying about five kilometers from the border with Pakistan, we, over the years, tricked ourselves into believing that we are just about safe distance from the reach of bullets. The myth so far has endured and so have we.
A third noise which is painfully absent is that of Dadi’s sloganeering, where she would wish and proclaim me as the leader of the nation. It’s been about six months since she left but I still search for her voice every time I call home.
Suddenly, the cuckoo clock strikes nine and the Eiffel from my window breaks into a sparkling frenzy. Amidst this song of cuckoo and the sizzle of Eiffel, the shrill noise of bullets still haunts. Across the oceans, as Mumma and I keep our conversation going, we slowly render the world more beautiful and the bullets, more absurd.
Sarvjeet Soodan 
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