Emptiness

Fiction

“Hey, aren’t you Karia?”

The question woke up Scaria from his reverie. He looked at the intruder for a while. “Hello, Jose.”

They were meeting after many, many years. Scaria had left the village half a century ago when his family migrated to North Kerala. He was a migrant ever since. As soon as he completed his plumber-electrician course, he left home to take up a job in the Gulf where he lived most part of his life. He married Cecily who was a nurse in the hospital where he worked as the plumber-electrician for a while. In the autumn of their life, they returned to live in Kerala. Their only daughter was married and Cecily spent most of her time with a Charismatic prayer group which was eminently active in the village and nearby towns.  Scaria was very religious too. Religion helped fill the emptiness which he experienced time and again in life. But God alone could not fill the void. That’s why he decided to visit his old village, the place of his childhood memories. Memories fill the void within. Can they also tear you apart?

“I was trying to recall the granite hill that was here,” Scaria said to his childhood friend.

“Stone mining. They made the hill vanish without a trace,” said Jose. 

“A lot of things have changed. That bridge over there, it used to be a three-foot wide wooden thing with some planks missing in between.”

“We used to run on it and jump over the gaping emptiness!”

“So much change!”

Jose invited his old friend home. “Have a cup of tea with us, at least.”

Scaria excused himself. He wished to spend a little time there looking at the emptiness that reigned where the favourite hill of his childhood had been. Climbing that hill up and down, up and down was his beloved game as a child. Sometimes one boy or another would chase him. He was not interested in the chase anyway. The climbing itself was his passion: up and down.

His life went through a lot of ups and downs after that. The usual ups and downs of life. Some estrangement with Cecily. His daughter’s love affair with someone whom she met on a Facebook chat. Her marriage and eventual fading away from his life.

This is life, he contemplated. Everything is so evanescent, even a granite hill.

He had come back to his childhood assuming that hills lasted beyond humans. Can a little faith bring back a mountain? A little dynamite can move a whole mountain!

Cecily must now be preaching to her prayer group about the power of faith to move mountains.

Can you move my mountain here, Cecily? Can you? Can you at least make the emptiness bearable?