Elephants trumpet in the nearby reserved forest. Nearer at hand, foxes scream, owls hoot, and frogs croak. Nocturnal insects chirp, squawk, and shuffle. The breeze suddenly dons the mantle of howling wind, and the swaying trees rustle loudly. They are all singing the usual lullaby, but do I detect a subtle difference in their tone tonight?
My son, sleeping in the next room, is insistent that I accompany him to the city. I suspect it is my doctor-friend and neighbor who has filled his ears with an exaggerated account of my supposedly failing health. Agreed, ‘exaggerated’ and ‘supposedly’ may not reflect the state of my health. I have been having some problems of late, and the doctor says age has caught up with me.
“Stop being adamant and behave sensibly, for a change. Go with your son. You require the services of a good hospital,” he had told me sternly.
Despite knowing that he is my sole inheritor, my son wants to prolong my life as much as possible by providing me modern medical attention. Respecting my deep attachment to the ancestral home, the hills, and woods, he had not pressed me till now.
“Decided to leave me?” my late wife asks me accusingly as soon as I shut my eyes. Suddenly I realize the tone of my friends in the wild is no different tonight.
It was to this house at the foot of the hills that my wife had come as a bride. She breathed her last one evening, after half a century, watching the outline of distant mountains through the open door, with a smile of contentment on her face. Her ashes were strewn from the top of a hillock, as she had requested me one day while sitting in the shade of a giant tree in the compound, eyes half-closed in the gentle breeze.
I wake up, as usual, hearing the cacophony of birds and sunlight streaking through the blinds on the windows.
My son enters the room and places a mugful of my favorite black tea on the table.
“So?” he asks.
I have made my decision. The doctors in the city may stretch my life a little, but I’m least interested. What I want is to kick the bucket right here, but I don’t want my son to feel guilty, either.
“I’ll come with you on one condition. Take a few days to do whatever you want to do about my health. Then I return.”
I expect an explosive reaction from him, but am surprised by his composure. He sips his coffee leisurely, glances at the garlanded photograph of his mother on the wall, and then at the globe of the sun rising beyond the mountains in all its glory. He looks in my eyes for a long moment, and smiles.
“Done,” he says.