Its a beautiful evening with hues of orange and darker greys in the sky . His short hair are occasionally lifted by the breeze blowing through the wide open window panes. There is set of lego blocks on the floor; red, black, white, grey and a bright yellow . Each has a different shape with different dimension and yet unlike our daily lives any piece here can fit onto any other without any difficulty. He sits engrossed building some structure out from his mind onto the blocks. There is a sound of quick footsteps and he is been forced to let go off these little pieces, get off his play and do his homework. There are running tear marks on his cheeks because of his continuous rant and crying of stating that he wants to play with his blocks instead of digging his head into the school notebook. Forced to let go off the last lego block from his hand, he is made to sit next to the pile of school books and notebooks.
He stares blankly at his lego chaos, his eyes tracing the path to the three notebooks piled on one another. The one at the bottom in blue has two sketches on the top; one is a boy with a pencil in his hand and is bent on the book with eyes wide opened with excitement, the other image is that of a girl with a high ponytail neatly tied and a wide grin; her legs wide open with both her arms raised holding a school book. Then there is a second notebook which is half hidden between the first and third. Its red in colour and there are few numbers visible at the corner stating mathematical activity. Then there is a third notebook on the top which is covered in a boring plane brown paper with a name sticker pasted on the front stating - Valay sawant, junior KG B. It is this book he needs to practice his alphabets right from A to Z three times. This three times seemed almost thirty times to him considering his pace and interest.
After a bit of sweet bitter exchange of words, he agrees to pick up his boring notebook to start practicing his alphabets. The inside pages of the notebook are marked with a set of four lines at constant intervals. A red, then blue, blue again and a red spaced out at one fourth of an inch. This entire set is spaced at half an inch from the next set. This is where he needs to start putting his alphabets.
"Start from the top red line, cross the first blue line and end it at the second blue line. None of the alphabets should touch the last red line" she says.
He picks his lead pencil lined in black and red, looks at it with disgust and bends over his notebook, writing his first letter A, which looks like crumbling mountain. And so he goes on dreamy eyed waiting for few minutes after every deshaped letter he draws.
“Why are you not writing properly? Your alphabets need to touch the second blue line Valay.”
“Mumma mere alphabets hawa mae udtae hain…..unko wings hain..” . (Mom my alphabets fly in the air, they have wings) he smiles and keeps making his alphabets a little above that blue line.
She smiles and looks back at him with her hands busy winding up heap of clothes piled on the floor for washing. A set of white fairy wings hang behind her on the wall and moves occasionally with the breeze.
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