Come back.. once

Last evening, when I went to the terrace of my granparents' house, some sights I had long forgotten, came back to me..

I saw a six-year-old girl who held her grandfather's hand and kept giving a broad smile every now and then..why? That evening, she had lost her first milk tooth to the tooth fairy..She wanted all the older kids who were playing there to ask her about her missing tooth. But of course, they were busy with their games. So she clung to Grandpa..

And then, there was the same little girl, standing on her toes, trying to peep from the terrace into the window to her grandfather's room. She kept staring at the bed in the room because it was empty..Grandpa wasn't resting on it like he always used to. The bed had been lying empty ever since Grandpa left two days back..never to come back again..and she hadn't even been able to meet him before he went away. She hadn't been able to put her head into his lap and hear a cute little bed time story from him.

In fact, it had been ages since Grandpa had told her a story. He was ill, and so ill that sometimes he refused to recognise her and once he even shouted at her. And she had always thought she was his little princess.

And even now as the girl, not little anymore, stared at the empty bed from the terrace, she wished Grandpa would come, just once...