Its a little more than one am on an icy Friday morning. I am wide awake engulfed with thoughts, memories and what not? I sit here listening to the house cringe to the bitterly cold outside; the windows ablaze with icy moisture and I warming to the luxury of night socks and down comforter.

The scene outside is nothing but a canopy of trees sans leaves, abandoned and wiled to battle the weather for a better spring in the waiting. The envelope of snow and its carpeted whiteness makes the night seem a shade brighter. The moon is nowhere in sight; just a grim sky etched with clouds and a few houses as shadows at a distance.

It’s a silent night nevertheless. All I hear are the occasional creaking of wood and the snort -like snores of N beside me. It reminds me that the houses in this part of the world are as living as the people in them; where the wood breathes, survives, wears and dies.

Such nights have been rare. I have always been the peaceful sleeper, the morning person; and if not sleeping, I’d be busy busting my ass to clear an exam or panicking for an assignment submission. Or if it were the 13th of December a five years ago, I’d be finishing up my phone calls with the world far and near, from every friend of the past fifteen years, many of who wouldn't recall a friend called DD now; And then I’d sleep tight with a smile of contentment. Or as the unripe teenager, I’d be giggling into my pillow with my best friend beside me; Or on even rarer nights finishing up the last dance to leave the party.

But it is not one of those nights. Its a night I have been sitting up to type; for stopping the thoughts that are racing past; of mundane memories of an era bygone; of bus numbers, previous home addresses, school buildings and names of roads walked or ridden; as if I was so grotesquely bored that I had been rewinding life in its bare details.

It is a night when I have no silent tear to shed; no secret crush to swell my heart to wake; no deadline looming; and no phone calls to wait for! And yet I lie awake to the perfect ruin of a winter sky, a tinge of purple in the air and the distant rumble of a heater; all in the wee hours of a sleepless Friday morning.