WATERMELON SEEDS

Dried watermelon seeds fell from his jeans pocket.

He had worn it after a long time, a faraway time, a time before this era. The era of Covid-19. That sultry day, in the intense activity of the classroom, seeds were among the many things passed around. He did not fancy those yet indulged in some and kept the rest in the pocket.

Months had passed. The virus infused a workless monotony, him being almost always in shorts and tees, no occasion meriting otherwise. Studies seemed a distant affair. Routine became a distant memory. Because time got struck in the puddle of a virus. There was nothing to distinguish one day from the other, except news, which he had stopped following after a while. All his neighbours brandished information and theories just like the news and news anchors. Each more ridiculous than the rest. For some time, he too was convinced with one of the narratives and almost had become an advocate for it.

But the excitement of this theory didn’t last long to save embarrassment as it was equally ridiculous if not more.

Meanwhile, life always found new ways of engagement. Unless one grew so hopeless as to slip into depression. He didn’t. Rather he couldn’t. He had been through worse. The Covid-19 lockdown had nothing to cash in from him, not for now.

One fine morning, getting bored of being bored, he pulled out a pair of jeans and a formal shirt. No reason, just to break the monotony of casualness imposed by lockdown. He felt something in the pockets. Upon upturning, dropped watermelon seeds…

Any other day, these were simply forgotten bits of food, clumsily occupying the jeans pocket. The maid would have discarded, eaten or simply given away.

Anything but mentioned anywhere, least of all in a blogpost here.

Not in a pandemic affected world. The seeds assumed gigantic proportions in his eyes. Little time capsules as they were, enclosing memories of his saner world. A mad, yet somehow a saner world.

Jack’s magic beans took him some place. To a conclusion. But his tumbling watermelon seeds were simply residues of a people, place and event that belonged to a different world. Inconsequential. Not to him.

None of the people who shared the watermelon seeds that day, he will ever see in the days to come. They were foreigners whose insignificance gave way to a subtle significance. It reminded him of the incompleteness that always defines human lifetimes of which, unfortunately, he would see more in the pandemic.

‘Get over it. Your mind is affected by the mood of the world. Nothing more, nothing less,’ said someone upon being mentioned, the tumbling watermelon seeds.

They fell down from his jeans. He swept them into the dustbin.

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