“The swing goes high, the swing goes low,
Sometimes fast, sometimes slow,
My happy heart sings a song,
I wish to sit here for hours long.”
I hummed my favorite rhyme as I sat on the swing. Every day I accompanied Amma to the bungalow. While Amma was busy with her chores as a maid I would enter the neglected palatial room upstairs that was dumped with broken furniture and unwanted knick-knacks. In the past two years, I had befriended every object there–the intricately carved broken teakwood sofa, the obsolete artifacts and the ornate murals. As for the huge swing–I felt like a queen sitting on it. It was my only respite in the otherwise lackluster life painted in monochrome hues of melancholy.
But sadly in this ephemeral life, everything ends.
As I sat on the swing one day, lost in a kaleidoscopic dreamland, I jolted with the honk of a car.
My mother called out to me. “Mayil! Come down quickly.”
My whole world fell apart when Amma said, “Mayil! Ayyah’s* son’s family will be moving upstairs. You can’t go there anymore.”
My swing. My sanctuary. How could I let go of it that easily?
I soon befriended Ayyah’s three-year-old grandson, Gopi. Under the pretext of playing with him, I would go upstairs. While he sat on the swing with me, I would merrily revel in my world.
But the devil played its vile plot…
One day as I was swinging, with Gopi on my lap, I was oblivious to him hanging by the edge of the swing and crying. By the time Ayyah and others rushed upstairs, Gopi had fallen and had a deep cut on his forehead.
Ayyah dragged me from the swing and slapped me. “Stupid girl! Get out. You and your mother. Don’t you dare step inside the bungalow!
I apologized. Begged. But all my pleas fell on deaf ears.
Our life was never the same again. My mother, being the sole breadwinner, had lost her job and couldn’t find another. Her health deteriorated slowly. My life was akin to living in a hellhole. I missed the swing every moment.
Drowned in despair, one day while I was sitting by a river, I saw the image of the swing beckon me from a distance. I was elated. I proceeded towards it regardless of the water choking my lungs. Soon my world was filled with a void. Zilch.
Within a few moments I weightlessly floated to my favorite swing. I swung it vigorously regardless of Gopi sitting on it. My cackling laughter reverberated across the room. A terrified Ayyah grabbed Gopi and screamed, “Pei*! Run.”
Finally, things had fallen into place. I was indeed a queen now. It was my swing. Only my swing. Always and forever. I hummed my favorite rhyme;
“The swing goes high, the swing goes low,
Sometimes fast, sometimes slow,
My happy heart sings a song,
I will always sit here for hours long.”
***
Glossary:
Ayyahh( in Tamil): Master
Pei ( in Tamil): Ghost
Prompt by ArtoonsInn : Write a story where the main character starts and ends in the same physical location.
Picture Credit : AI generated by Bing
