October Sky

He was still trying to find it in the sky. Something he knew, which is up there and appeals to a part of him. He had asked everyone about it and failed. Some gave him that same old look, which he was very used to getting by now. Whenever he asked something which a person didn't know; he was treated with a contemptuous question in return. The omniscient teachers didn't help either. In fact they were most apprehensive about the thought process itself. The friends thought he will get crazy if he hasn't already.

For him it all started when he read about it 3 months back on a piece of old newspaper. Although he also knew that somewhere deep inside a part of him always wanted to believe. This piece of paper gave his imagination new wings. His mind was flooded with questions of all sorts. The torrent of thoughts which as too much for his 9 year old mind. He could join the smaller pieces of picture really well. He can fill in the gaps almost perfectly for a boy as young as him. The world around him provided him the biggest jigsaw puzzle he ever dreamt of. In reality his parents couldn't afford one even if he had known something like this exists. His thoughts were his best companions and in this way he was lucky to have a lot of them. He had found that piece of paper fluttering in the air one windy summer afternoon. The first thing that attracted his eyes were the pure black background, with a blue and grey spheres in the foreground. It reminded him of something he once saw in one of the textbooks he has inherited from another boy a year younger. In his village the books had a long tradition of changing hands. Some even crossed generations, from fathers to sons, although his father never had time or intent of even looking at one. His father has always been too busy working at the farms for since he was 10. So he got his books from a friend and they happened to be ancient in all modern sense. One of these books had a similar looking image and it didn't tool him long to fill in the blanks. The striking image on the piece of paper is the colored picture of the same things. There was a news with that picture saying something which was beyond his imagination. Everything he has construed till now has just got such so much bigger. It was like constructing everything brick by brick from inside out. He has his own pace to work with, adding bricks at his own pace and he was happy with his own progress. He thought he was doing it good. This one picture in blue and grey has just shown him the vast expense of space around his own little place he knew all about. All this while he was counting days; trying to find something more about the wilderness around him. The wilderness never bothered him.......................

cotinued