The way he said I'm done running it seemed he would not just want to hang his boots but also let go of his legs, begging mercilessly to have them removed for him.

I've done running. I've been running all my life. I'm tired. He said them in such an exasperation, a mixture of anger imminent from the spit forming at the corner of his lips and despondence the way his shoulders drooped after wards. I could not help think about my grandfather who had seen enough on his first run, the things to come, the pangs of life in exile and decided not to come down from the mountains where the first settlement was. He hung his boots long time back. Now Mr. Tenzing after so many years. In a way my grandfather was a visionary, he did not want to run his luck too far, and he sense that there would be more displacements and more running. Growing up I would overhear my dad talking to my mom about his old man who would not budge from his ramshackle home. There would be a long wait before each winter when up from the north my grandfather would send us something inside a rag its mouth stitched with needle and thread. Our Santa Claus. But that was something my brother came up with years later when we knew what it had inside. My brother was being crudely funny. Inside would be a letter with roasted barley from his backyard mill in another bag its mouth tied with a string and a bag of dried cheese he had to watch over while being sun dried because the birds could sweep them away. We try to slaver the dried cheese rolling our tongue around it, resisting a bite, white bits slouching off and we would laugh at each other when some stick to the side of our mouth. I cannot make it down this time, I have to watch over the house. May be next time. A smeary blue scrawled on a paper. He never came down. As years went by with his age catching up with him and in solitude, he was heard by someone to have said that he could not be in his seventies and that he is en route back home and taking a rest. He never reached home.

I once happened to be in a shop where an old man with stubbly chin had a small boy hoisted from his waist, his legs dangling, fingers pointing at every jar of sweets displayed on top of the counter shouting out I want this I want that. The old man replied which seemed more to the man behind the counter who by now looked irritated because the boy's legs were banging against the glass counter,'You can get all of them. Your mother pays for them.'