THE SPECIAL DAY                                                                                                                                               Rashid Javaid

It was a cold merciless morning. The sky was cloudy. A cool wind was blowing. He was standing in the balcony of his rented house and was busy looking outside. The wind was carrying all the filthy stuff gathered on the footpaths and was throwing it in the air. Dust came right into his nostrils which annoyed him and he turned his face towards the silent houses across the road. These houses seemed to be deaf and dumb and the only sign of life was the seldom barking of some dog. The street was usually calm and silent.

Such silence was also prevailing in his room where he was standing. The closed windows of the room had blocked the fresh air and the temperature in the room was a bit warmer. The beds in the room were covered with recently washed bed sheets and smelled out the soap which was used for washing them. These bed sheets were used only on special occasions like today and reminded him of the public officers who are considered important only when they are invited as guests or chief guests at some occasion.

He closed the window and started pacing the room. He looked at the floor and saw ants making a zig zag line from floor to ceiling. Following this line he looked at the ceiling of the room but could not ascertain the starting point of the line as the two way traffic of the ants was confusing him. He was so busy in searching the starting point of the line that he did not know when his wife entered his room. She watched for a while and said:

“You have spent a lot of time in studying the ants…you know it is a special day today…the day comes after a year again…” Her voice was full of satire and rage.

His wife had cleaned the entire house for this special day and her mood was rotten. Such cleaning always made her mood very dangerous.