Paawani

Some days... you don't need to think of a title for your blog. The images give your memory a gentle nudge and you comply.

Paawani Trivedi is a Seventh Grade student. Well she's more than that. Paawani is literally the pure one. She is that flickering tongue of bonfire that sometimes leaps majestically in air and mesmerises us. Somewhere beyond her dreamy eyes, there is a warmth that draws close to me when I cross the threshold and enter the room. She glides and conjures many a charm bubble. They aren't gaudy, bejewelled ones. They are all faintly yellow, glowing dimly like the gentle, benign truth. We don't talk much. We don't need to.

The totem?

Well it started months ago when I read the first in the series of "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid". I liked it and asked for the sequel. It wasn't with her and I prepared myself for a long wait. Holidays came and went. A new term began. Somewhere, like every relationship, the insecurities crept into the one that I shared with them. I realised that I'm not new anymore. What if they got bored and didn't love me?

Why did they shout in class one day and why did I leave, broken and hollow? What snapped? I don't know. It felt like a break-up. They apologised, got punished and doodled for me. They wanted to be forgiven. I wasn't even sure they knew what they had done.

But the day I came back, there she stood with the sequel in her hand.

Some days ago, I missed out on classes for 3 days in a row. I wasn't well. I was depressed. And very, very preoccupied. When I came back, there she was again. Book in hand.

I took it this time. It's more than just a book. It's her secret... and it has healing powers.