KEPOMPONG

A FROZEN QUESTION

The sound of the brake clutching the road ripped apart the silence of the cold morning air. Crassssshhhhhhhh… his body flew into the air and hit the front part of the taxi. He rolled down from the car and laid flat on the road. The taxi driver dashed out of his car. Two men burst out of the crowd. They carried the man into the taxi, while the rest of people stood still observing with curiosity as if it watching their most wanted “wrestle mania” show. It all happened in seconds, one of ill-fated moments for the man and the taxi driver.

As the taxi driver was about to leave, a man who claimed himself as a journalist, arrived on the scene. He took the taxi driver out of the car and played the leading role of a hero. A lady shoved her head out of her window and shouted out reminding them about the injured man. Two policemen, as has always been plotted on any movies, arrived on the scene later and took over the case. It took sometimes before the taxi left with the injured man and the police.

She was there right behind the scene. She witnessed everything and felt uncomfortable. The girl sat quietly and nicely next to her. She knew that the silence was fake and she detests this frozen moments. The girl might have heard her unspoken wishes. She turned her head, hesitated for a moment and asked a question: “Why didn’t you help him?”

She didn’t know where to start. She definitely didn’t want to start with the torn apart social values and norms for it would have opposed with all the comforting and pleasing values and norms preached at school. An ugly picture that she herself had witnessed, and above all she saw her own face in that picture. A picture she had just drawn in the naïve canvas of the girl’s mind.

She pretended as if she was focusing to the traffic. Her mind was boggling with the question. The same very question which is valid for everyone. The same question, which has been laid there in the corner of her own mind, frozen, unanswered.