Gratefullness Part 1

He had a fitful sleep but was happy that it was morning. At least he could go out and breathe the crisp morning air. Waiting to get away from the suffocating room. Something fresh to replace a stale existence temporarily. As he walked out of his room briskly thoughts came out his head like a hot geyser out of cold earth. A distinguished English teacher at his peak, he was very close to his ideals. He was proud of this. His ideals were the imaginary gods he prayed to and kept happy. It was the same reason due to which he was alone even post retirement.

He lost touch with relatives long time back and he practically lived alone since the age of fourty. He recollected events in his life as he walked down the dirt path down to the main road leading to the corporation playground. Teaching at the local government school had never been easy since the students were not very much interested in anything apart from breaking something or the other save for very few students who tried hard but never gave him intellectual satisfaction. It was not like this always, he taught in an elite school for around twenty years he was thrown out for bad attendance and temper. The truth was that the standard of the school had gone down. Being a disciplined teacher meant that he was old school therefore unfit for the current crop of students who were impertinent and they came to school since they just had to. A bad period followed which led to him joining a government school another move which backfired for him.
He satiated himself on literature -the Elliots, the Wordsworths, the Salingers kept his pallate hungry for more. From popular fiction to classics there was virtually no author he missed, no poet he did not relish. He enjoyed good literature like a gourmet, the cheap ones supported his survival. He wrote voraciously as well. His ill maintained single bedroom apartment was full of paper, books and silverfish. The journey from being a gregarious person to a loner was slow. A forced metamorphosis. May be it was meant to be this way he thought as he walked into the public garden. He perched himself on a bench.