Garden Bench

Hi, I am the garden bench. Some call me a seat, some call me a chair, some just a park bench. Names don’t matter. I have been around for ages; wherever humans lived, I too found a corner. I don’t move, yet people find comfort in me. They rest, they pause, they breathe, and occasionally breeze (from the back door) those who are seated on me. I am a silent companion and bearer to their leisure.

I stand under the sun, burn in its heat. I get drenched in the monsoon, chilled in winter. Birds and animals chirp, pee, and poo on me, but that’s fine now I am used to it. I am a home for the homeless, comfort for addicts and also sofa-cum-bed for lovers and whoremongers. People use me to talk, but no one ever talks to me. Sometimes I am surrounded, sometimes left lonely for days. My father was a strong one; he stood proudly in a garden for nearly two hundred years. I? I am not as tough. Forty-five years, and rust already eats me slowly. Who knows how many days are left only God can tell.

Father used to share with me the legacy of his time. The secrets he overheard, the conspiracies whispered, the laughter, the sobs. But he never told details because benches like us, we are mankind’s most trusted lieutenants. We listen, but we never betray.

Still, I’ve been hurt. Lovers carved their promises into me, sometimes even their heartbreak. Their “forevers” cut deep, their “nevers” cut deeper. My surface carries wounds of human emotions.

Strange times now. People still sit, but they hardly speak. Their tongues are silent, their ears idle. Their eyes and fingers are busy with glowing screens. Once, I used to hear shouts, giggles, quarrels, and confessions. Now, I hear only silence broken by the tapping of glass.

I wonder about the future. Will my children find a place in this world? Or will benches disappear with the gardens themselves? For where there is no garden, there is no Garden Bench. And without both, maybe there will be no pause left in human lives at all.