Sunroof

Our Saturday home has a Sunroof. Rented for a couple thousand bucks. Couple thousand. Swiped off an unsuspecting credit card, to pop up as a surprise in the bill, a month later, like an unwanted child and what not. 

Downstairs there is a Champaca tree. Magnolia Champaca. The one with seductive yellow bud like flowers and honey like smell. We have a swing tied onto one of its branches. With nylon rope of fluorescent green and one discarded wooden table top as a seat. Sometimes I sit in the sun and swing. 

When I am inside, I use the Sunroof. It's right above the empty hall, by the stairway. Leaning on the railing of the spiral stairway, I can see the sun. Clouds. Sometimes the moon. Sometimes the birds. And when it lashes, I can see the rain. Falling vertically, forcefully, under gravity and striking the glass top of our Sunroof. 

In Autumn mornings, when the Champaca flowers I walk down the stairway, pick up fallen flowers from the dust and clutch them onto my hair. Back in the house, a thick beam of sunlight falling through the Sunroof lightens the hall. I stretch myself under the beam of light and bathe for a while. On afternoons, I pull a chair or just sit on the floor and watch the night envelope the sky.

A Sunroof is an amazing thing to have when it intensifies one's propensity for life. Just for a couple thousand, off an unsuspecting credit card.