The Wall

Those days he would stand most of the time on a ladder, placing bricks on his wall. I still remember when he started, can’t tell really when, but when he started, the wall wasn’t so tall and neither was he, so alone. I am not too sure, if he started building it from where someone left it, or he was the one who laid the first brick, brick-by-brick it has grown so tall now, I doubt if my voice would reach the other side.

I was just another stare-at-it-from-under-your-hat pedestrian, when I used to watch him placing the bricks. I think I knew him well, when the wall was so short and when he was sitting on the ground and placing the bricks. I would talk to him sometimes, looking in his sleepy-wary eyes, one could tell, he was placing the bricks all-the-way through the night…

He never told me, for what he was building the wall, never I would wonder either… I used to think, he built it to protect all that for which he stood by. Then I felt, he built it, so that no one could see what he is doing on the other side. Now I feel, maybe I should have asked him, why…

These days, I don’t even recall how he looked like, there’s not much I can see beyond the bricks to find out. One-by-one when he placed them, maybe I should have talked to him more…

So I decided to just ignore his wall, and forget everything I could remember about him. I decided not to stare at his wall or for that matter anybody’s wall, I would just abandon all the thoughts I had for everyone of them. And, before I knew, I had started building my own wall…