It feels just crazy. All of it. It was all going good and pretty well just a month before in my life and now I am stuck two-ways.

Night was really bad. She slept in the bedroom while I got myself in the pull-out on the back porch. I couldn't sleep all night. Part of me was upset, another fuming. Mostly it was my amazement (I finally realized that by afternoon). Now, I just really wanted to get away. No doubt I was depressed by now.

It's not for the first time that I have been depressed though. I remember the time when my grandfather passed away when I was in college. Pretty old man at eighty-nine he was. I got a call to my college from home while we were hanging around at the basketball court. It was strange for me as it was for the first time I had been called while in school or college. I had been terrified from within.

As I reached the college office and got to the telephone, there he was, my dad, all grave and calm. And then he gave me the news. It all just became slow and silent for me for a while. My dad hung up the phone as the job was done. He didn't want his son to hear his shaking voice anymore, perhaps. I could never know that. I loved my grandpa a lot. And it was his stories. Ha! Let me not just jump into it. It's about what happened today.

Cut to morning. I was gently pissed off. I didn't want to see Aly's face at all. Can't recall when it was for the last time I hated her this lot. But by then I was clear in my mind – I am going to Singapore; as soon as possible. Or at least away from her. So, I booked a flight to Singapore tonight at ten. All morning just went busy handling calls. My phone's battery had been gone by noon.

Nothing significant happened. Not until afternoon.

It was around 4 o'clock when I started my packing. There was a sense of relief over Aly's face. By now my anger had cooled down however. The balance between anger and guilt had tipped over. I wish I could change it; I wish I could hold you back – I told her in my mind. But it was all over now. The decision was done. The road set; and a visit to the lawyer scheduled.

So I just went in to my bedroom, got my stuff bagged and then went down to the cellar. Everything a mess down there. I had some old, important company files to fetch that were stacked somewhere in the cellar. I could remember they were somewhere in the old family cupboard. So I just walked over to the cupboard and opened it – messier than the cellar itself. Some belongings of my parents, pile of old files – lands, properties, shares, bank files and all. I realized I had to go for a frantic search in there as soon as I saw the mite-eaten files. "Piece of shit", I muttered.

Big cupboard – seven feet, six shelves. By the time I completed searching through five of them, it was already over an hour. There were some suitcases up there in the sixth shelf. It was difficult for me to reach up there nor could I see anything for me to stand myself on. So I had to reach out for the handle of one of the suitcases and bring it down. I groaned as I stretched my body and tried to pull it. Two suitcases – the one I pulled and the one placed over it – they slipped and came down. While one hit my chest, the other landed straight on my right foot (And I was wearing only slippers). "Son of a –!", I cried out. The cases jolted themselves open and their contents spread out on the floor. My chest didn't hurt much but my foot felt numb for a while. I checked on my foot. There was a minor slit from which fresh blood was slowly seeping out. Holding my leg and swearing, I stooped down to gather the contents up and simultaneously check for the files.

While going through some folders, my eyes fell on a small, old album. It had been filled with dust badly. I picked it up and wiped the dust over it. "Sweet old men – Martin Brown" – was written over it. Martin, my grandpa. I gave out a long sigh as I saw it. As I turned it open, there was a blank page at first on which, with faded blue ink – MEDITERRANEAN – was written. As I flipped it over, there was a picture next, of course. An old, black and white photograph that was probably taken during the War in 40s when he had been in the Royal Australian Navy. Most of the pictures were group photos on ships; on different ships. People on deck, stern, at the dine and so on. Those were taken by some higher authorities it seemed as cameras were rare back then. Or there was some rich fellow among them who could afford it.

My grandpa was a war veteran, who had been stationed in Mediterranean back some time in 1942. "Sea's mah darling I never wanna part with", he used to say. After the end of his tenure as a Lieutenant, he served in different naval ships as a Board officer or supervisor. When I was in school, I would go to my grandparents in vacations who lived in Mackay. The favourite part of my vacation was 'Grandpa's stories'. We would sit in the porch or lawn of his two-storey house and he would narrate to me his voyage stories sipping his tea. Although most of the days we would sit on his old wooden rocking chairs, it was on the downpouring days we would sit on the steps of the porch from which the drops of rain were at a reachable distance. My grandfather, while narrating his stories, would reach out to the falling drops with his hand and ask me to do the same. "No worries if the clothes get dirty, kid. We must sometimes feel and respect nature the way it is", he would say.

These sitting on the steps stopped when he got older. With time, the porch was also gone. In his last years, I would sit by his bed on the first floor while he would go on with his stories lying still on his bed. His age never mattered to him. He always wanted to sit on the porch saying he could bear the pain in his joints just to walk out into the porch. But it was his love for my grandma that would make him lie on his bed reluctantly. He always had that zeal to narrate his stories. Perhaps, I had always ever been his lone audience. My grandma, Ava, was a busy homely lady who had no time for his stories. "While he would be in sea, my heart would float up to my throat", she had once said to me. For her, the stories were always repulsive as they reminded her of her lonely times.

As he would narrate me his stories, they would fill my childhood brain with fantasies of voyages. Fantasies which got blurred out with time and the race for money. Sometimes I wish if we could always be kids – as if as a wish. Then, as I went on going through the pictures, that old childish zeal came tiding back to me filling my heart with nostalgia and happiness. As I saw those people on the ships, by the sea, laughing and joking around, my imagination started seeing them in their retro attires, in their uniform, sailing over the sea, taking in every essence of the vast blue. For some moments I had forgotten whatever had been going on in my life and the photographs brought a smile over my face. With the smile also came a regret that I have never been on a ship ever. And, as if in a split second, came the question – What if I could sail to Singapore? My heart yelled to me – Yes! My instinct – What about the time lost? And that made me pick up my phone absently and call Alex.

"Hey, man, how you—"
"Hey, will it be okay if I come some 8-9 days later?", I asked him before he could complete.
After a brief pause, he said, "Um, sure. We are not starting up anything for at least next 5 days yet. The shifting's going on so... If there's not going to be any big addition in our schedule, then well, yeah, I can handle it."
"Thank you, Alex. That will be a big help."
"No problem, pal", he said as I hung up the phone and then went on to cancel my plane.