It was half past one on a Sunday afternoon. On any other Sunday the Nair family would have been fast asleep in their cozy bed—an afternoon nap routine ever since the summer started. Megha would have been on one side of the bed, one of her arms dangling from the edge. Siddharth would have been on the other side, snoring away. And little Aditya would be snuggled up between his parents. But not today.
Today, the Nair house was busy and smelled of paint. The doors were open and men wearing once-clean-but-now-covered-with-dried-paint overalls moved in and out of the house with brushes, ladders, and buckets of colour. Young Aditya watched all of this happen from the top of the staircase. His parents were downstairs, shuttling from one room to the other, covering up furniture, giving orders to the painters, and whatever else grownups do in these situations. He sat there, fidgeting with his shirt buttons, watching everything unfold—and every now and then, his gaze drifted to a dark, dirt-smudged streak on the wall above the steps. The streak started a few steps in from the bottom and ended a few steps away from where Aditya was sitting.
He saw a man coming towards the staircase with a bucket in his hand. The man placed the bucket on a piece of newspaper at the bottom of the staircase, opened it, and took out a paintbrush from a pocket in his overalls. He looked up at Aditya, who was staring down at him, and waved.
‘Hey there,’ he called out and waited for a reply.
Nothing came. Not even a smile.
‘What colour do you want us to paint your room?’ the man tried again with a smile. This time also in vain.
He shrugged, knelt down, and dipped the brush in the white paint. He raised it up to the wall. The bristles hovered a breath away—when a meek scream rang out from above.
‘No. No. Please don’t. No!,’ the boy kept shouting. The man stood up wondering what he had done. Siddharth ran from out of a room and stood next to the painter. His son was now coming down the stairs, his short legs trying their best to skip a few steps.
‘What happened?’ Siddharth asked the man.
‘I—‘ the man mumbled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Megha asked as she walked past her husband and went up the stairs. She picked up her son and nestled him in her arms. ‘What happened?’
‘Please don’t paint this,’ Aditya replied. ‘Please Amma, tell him not to.’ He pointed at the wall.
Megha looked down at her husband and met his tender gaze. They were both thinking the same thing.
‘But sir,’ the painter whispered. ‘That’s the dirtiest wall in the house. Look at that line running from the bottom to the top.’
The other painters had also gathered around to watch the commotion. A screaming child and a confused colleague. Now that’s a story that they could all laugh about during their tea break.
‘Megha, take him upstairs to bed. I’ll handle this,’ Siddharth said and turned towards the man on his left.
Megha didn’t wait a second. She caressed her son’s back as she climbed up.
‘Acha, please,’ the boy sniffled. Megha felt a wetness on her shoulders.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered in his ears. ‘It’s gonna be alright.’
She tucked him inside the bed, wiped the tears away from his cheeks, and consoled him. The boy kept on crying. Soon, it waned. He sniffled some more but exhaustion got the better of him. Outside, the shadows stretched long across the street, then slowly dissolved into the night.
The boy woke up a while later to darkness. He stumbled out of the bed, slightly dazed, and found his way to the door. He opened it to the smell of paint.
It’s done. It’s over, said a voice inside him.
His heart sank a little but he kept walking. He reached the stairs and walked down, trying his best not to look at the wall to his right. He could smell the paint, heavy in his nostrils, but even heavier in his heart. His parents had heard him opening the door upstairs and were waiting for him at the foot of the staircase. Once down, he looked up at them. They were smiling. Aditya saw his mother’s gaze shift towards the wall. He turned around slowly and looked up.
The fresh white paint glowed warmly under the yellow lights from the ceiling. Aditya was about to turn back around when he saw it. He saw the brown hair and the black shiny nose. He saw the fluffy tail, now frozen on the wall mid-wag. He saw those floppy ears and that tongue sticking out. Aditya looked at his friend on the wall. Uncanny. Just how his buddy used to look like when he would walk up and down the stairs, his paws tippy-tapping on the wooden steps, his brown coat brushing against the wall, while following around his humans.
Aditya stared at the painting on the wall for some more time, turned around, hugged his parents’ legs, and cried. But this time it was different.
