Perfect Harmony

Every day he would go for his stroll around 6 pm. The dusk somehow always beckoned. It was always the same routine where he would wear his favorite hat and walk down the cobbled path just around the bend of the “rosewood road”. The Church was rarely visited now, the stained-glass window was broken, the creeper once laden with white roses, today, was just a mess of cobbled twigs and the bench which was once green and welcoming, was full of moss. 

Yet, the gray called out to him. Though uncanny, the place in its entirety made sense, forgotten, untouched, laden with memories of yester years. It was comforting. It reassured him, that, even in today’s fast changing world there was some constant. A place, he could visit everyday devoid of the constant flux. No one bothered visiting it or sprucing it up. The shiny white Church with the Saturday choir and the Sunday fest was more attractive to most.

Each day the routine was the same. The walk took him thirty minutes down the cobbled path, past the post box at the corner of Cobalt, past De’ Souza’s Patisserie, up the small hillock and then around the bend. It would take him exactly 28 minutes. He had timed it on multiple occasions. The Church did not have a name, the signboard was long gone. He had named it “Church of Harmony”. Its existence and serene surroundings created a melody which somehow sang a tune of perfect harmony.

He would sit there every day till 7:10 pm when the sun would set admiring the myriad of colors splashed during sunset. As the colors splashed, the sun would leave for its heavenly abode, he would take out his mouth organ and play the same tune, “ a melody, he wrote, years ago”. He could never give words to the tune but it did seem to have a beginning, middle and an end… As the evening gave way to night, he would walk back down the same path home…

………

She had wandered off the group. The school trip was so not fun. The teacher had promised a day of fun and games but this educational tour was not what she had signed up for. She remembered fighting with her mom, insisting that this trip was compulsory