It was raining heavily, and the fear of each battering rain…

The right loop was frayed, as it was hung on one ear more often.

The top was worn out, worn below the nose, as if it held the nose from running.

The bottom was frazzled, bristled by the beard.

The specks of dust, the stains, the creases...they held memories of months. Plop!

The mask remembered being thrown away into the bushes, his loop caught in a twig as he fluttered in the winter wind like a broken wing.

A cow had sniffed him, and sensing remnants of her butchered sisters, had moved away with a start. The mask, however, was caught in her horn.

Repulsed by the perversion, the cow had charged ahead, as if trying to escape the horror on her horns.

People fled from the way, dogs yelped and disappeared, crows followed the frenzied cow like bikers slithering behind an ambulance, even as other cows grazed on the green grass.

The cow, hearing the clanging of temple bells, stopped herself outside as if calmed by the rhythmic sound. A kind old man came out, shook his head at what he saw, removed the mask from the horn, and threw it into the mud.

It was in this mud that the mask had breathed to life.

The Sun was shining brightly, and the mask, clean and bereft of the burden of memories, fluttered like a newborn butterfly.

A gust of wind carried the mask high, away from the mud, and while startling some birds, he pirouetted with an abandon that only solitude can provide.

"I have to tease the trees," said the gust of wind and whooshed away to the nearby grove, and the mask floated like a feather to the ground.

"Nice to meet you," said the mask to another that was lying on the ground, dusty with memories. "Were you brought in here by a cow too?"

"Cow?" said the other mask. "I have been lying here for weeks, unable to move."

"Well, you are fat."

"I have six layers of protection, and you? A tattered cloth with two loops."

"Yet," said the mask, "here we are in the mud. Just that a tattered cloth with two loops can fly."

The mask flew away and hovered near a highway. Borne by the turbulence of impatience, the mask swooshed in and hit a lady inside a bus trying to eat her biryani. Startled, she dropped the dabba on the floor.

The mask just escaped the memory of that biryani and fell on the floor.

In the darkness of the floor the mask was imprinted by the stamping of feet, buffeted and torn, his threads fraying at the seams, his loops broken at one end.

After a while, a lean man entered with a broom, and threw the mask outside, along with plastic bags and travel memories.

"Take me away," cried the mask to the wind. "I was born to be a barrier to that which is foul, not a carrier."

"You are not the only one," sang the wind, "staring at the Sun..."

"Really?" chided the mask, fluttering angrily.

The wind carried the mask towards the vast ocean.

The mask soaked in the infinity of the ocean, waves upon waves upon waves!

"Come to us," said a ripple, "and become us."

The mask floated on the waves like hope in cold winter, and the ocean slowly stripped him of all his memories, the burdens he carried, and took him inside.

The mask danced slowly in the water, undulating to the undercurrents, a dainty denizen...

All that remained was a tatter of threads, threads twisted like worms, and in that immeasurable expanse where time became one with waves, ebbing and flowing, there no longer was any mask./