Was sitting at my window this morning, puffing away broodingly. My nose numb even to the smell of cigarettes suddenly reacts to the whiff of some delicious chapattis. Nothing can beat the smell of something hot and comforting on a wet rainy day.

 Childhood memories danced in front of my eyes. The lilac colored window of a humble abode in a nondescript village and two tiny hands stretched out from the grill towards black clouds hovering above. A tiny prick was all that they needed, the little girl thought.

The smell of hot chapattis flooded her tiny home. She turned away from the window and greedily looked on as her mother put some sugar on them. Within seconds the monster in her tummy had gobbled it all up and renewed with energy, the little girl with pig tails ran around the house in her petticoat, waiting for her sister to join in and make paper boats. The clouds had burst.

I remembered the little girl, laughing heartily, chasing her paper boat, drenched with life, clapping with gusto as the other kids joined in. Mom’s calls to come home fell on deaf ears; the pitter- patter of the raindrops was more fascinating. Somehow it muted out everything unwanted.  The paper boat sailed away in the gully, braving the monstrous drops of rain. It didn’t matter where it was headed at that time… there was no rush to get anywhere.  Free to travel as it pleased. An occasional push was all it needed.

 There was serenity in being a drifter.

 Today I do wonder where it might have docked. Did it sink? Did it fall in the hands of a paperless girl at the end of the gully? Did it get stuck in the weeds? 

 Somehow as you grow older, life becomes a series of what if’s and if only’s. And yet, there is more strength in being a paper boat than in being the rain of cold reason. In being a child who lives in the moment and never grows up.

Insia is a graduate from F.I.T New York (Advertising and Mass communications), loves to tell stories and is a filmmaker. ‘The Candy Man’, her hard hitting debute film on child abuse won her two ‘Best Director’ awards in India (2009, 2010) and also got nominated at Barcelona International Film Festival and the New York Short film Festival in 2010.