Flight (standard:drama, 2985 words)
Author: Ms Novice	Added: Mar 12 2004	Views/Reads: 3268/2239	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Mridula, a foreign student in US who will soon be homeward bound, visits the Art Institute of Chicago and comes upon a most unexpected artwork, which show her that sometimes the path to the future leads through the past

It began snowing the instant Mridula set foot out of the cab. For a
moment she stood rooted to the sidewalk, her vision dotted with white, 
feeling like some tiny figurine inside a snow globe that had suddenly 
been shaken. It was her first winter in Chicago, and she found this 
display of Mother Nature's frigid side disconcerting. Up until six 
months ago, she had taken Her clement disposition for granted as only a 
true Bombayite could. 

She tussled with the jacket hood. Her luxuriant hair hated to be
confined, and usually broke free of any clip, band or cap that tried to 
keep it in check. Its look-at-me quality stood in sharp contrast with 
her petite frame and delicate features; the only gregarious aspect of 
her otherwise diffident demeanor. 

Mridula believed her hair was a gift from her grandmother. Dadi ma had
taken up the task of oiling, massaging, washing, drying, combing and 
braiding her hair ever since she was four. She had tended to it with 
the patience of a gardener, plying it with a profusion of herbal 
concoctions, and it had blossomed under her tender ministrations. 

When she was packing for this first ever stay away from home, dadi ma
had hobbled in and handed her a pouch of her homemade hair powder. Now 
every other Sunday, Mridula would boil a spoonful of it along with some 
tea leaves, add five drops of oil and one egg-white, apply the 
resulting glop on her scalp, and potter around her dorm room for an 
hour, happy to have her dadi ma with her in that faint yet lingering 
perfume which had a top note of henna, a middle note of amla and a 
coconutty base. 

It will be nice to see everyone again, Mridula thought as she hurried
towards her destination – the monstrous stone structure across the 
street, with the words ‘Art Institute Of Chicago' etched above its 
doorway. The establishment was trying hard to fit in with the festive 
look the rest of Michigan Avenue wore – all the shrubs were dressed up 
in tinsel lights, and the two sculpted lions that flanked the entrance 
looked somewhat embarrassed by the plush holly wreaths and oversized 
red bows adorning their metallic manes. 

As she took on the gleaming wide stairs, Mridula was reminded of the
Asiatic library, and of a blistering hot summer week spent extracting 
information from its disobliging innards during her student years in 
South Bombay. There I go again, she thought, relating to my present in 
terms of the past. Well, familiar things did provide a certain 
security-blanket-like sense of comfort. But wasn't her nostalgia merely 
a reaction to their absence? 

If so, it followed that this image of climbing the museum stairs, and
other such trivial moments that had made up these past few months would 
acquire a soft warm glow in her memories once she was back in India. 
Would she then think wistfully of her newfound sense of personal space, 
as she now did of family gatherings? 

Mridula glanced down at her wrist, then did a quick scan of the
vicinity. No sign of Beck. Well, that was to be expected. Beck was 
unlike any woman she had ever known – strong and sassy and kind and 
kooky all at once. But punctuality was not among her repertoire of 
lovable traits. Mridula headed for the foyer, leaned against a pillar 
and prepared to wait. 

Beck was Rebecca; a fellow student at the Advanced Program for
Multimedia & Web Design Mridula had taken at DePaul University. The two 
women had forged a fond sisterhood during the six-month course. It had 
been Beck's idea that they make a list of all the touristy stuff 
Mridula had wanted to do ever since she got here, but couldn't because 
of her grueling schedule. Then they would do it all, to commemorate her 
final days in the Windy City. 

This made for a whirlwind of a week, kicked off last night by a visit to
the Signature Room for a spectacular night view of the Loop and a sour 
apple martini (it didn't even taste like alcohol!).  Tomorrow they 
planned to spend a happy afternoon with the animals of Lincoln Park zoo 
while Thursday would be dedicated to the sights and sounds of Navy Pier 
down by the lake. Friday the entire gang was taking her jazz-club 
hopping, so that she might (as Beck put it) take back some of that 
be-bop in her soul, as a souvenir. 


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