The light has gone out. The bastards have finally disconnected his line. He checks the electricity bill -'3 months past' due it says. He looks forlornly at his dancing reflection on the other framed photograph of his parents hung on the other wall, cast by the flame of the flickering kerosene lamp. Ironic, he thinks. For that is what he is now-a mere reflection of his former self. The once handsome, ambitious and capable boy, has been replaced by a pot bellied, balding middle aged man. His nails and teeth bear nicotine stains. Too many beedis, he thinks.Got to cut down on smoking. The skin has crumpled around his eyes. A salary of 15000 rupees does not provide him with enough to keep his vanity intact. It's his birthday today. He turns 42. 42 long years of mediocrity. It seems aeons ago when as a graduating student of the batch of '70, he was ready to take on the world, ready to go places where his father or his father's father had not dared to go. He wanted to write and change the world, one book at a time. He had genuinely believed in the cliched saying of 'Pen is mightier than the sword' or as they say in the 70s Calcutta, the revolver. He had chickened out - for he found more comfort in his fish and rice and his 10'*10' room than in the graffiti laden streets of Calcutta His eyes get moist. He wants to cry out loud. The self respecting man in him wants to rise up and do things that he never could, never dared. He reminisces - of a life that could have been.
He is woken out of his stupor by a smell. He knows the smell although he cannot quite place it at this moment.
Ah! it is his favorite incense stick burning infront of his 4'×6' framed photograph.His wife, dabs her moist eyes with the end of her cheap cotton saree and wishes him Happy Birthday!
