The Window Washer.

     A diadem of sweat droplets glistened brightly on the man's balding forehead. He wiped them off with his bare hands, as he immersed the water-dripping piece of rag, yet again into the bucket of smeared water. How he yearned for one of those rare and tranquil September winds.

      Squeezing the excess water out from the cloth, he slid it horizontally on the window pane, scrubbing it in a habitual manner, which had by now, become quite monotonous to him. Yes, he was a window washer. One of those lowly, obscure jobs which any American would look upon with scorn and disdain. But as the man used to put it,'The job of a window washer is indeed like a dirty window. Unless you look beneath the dirt, you wont see how bright it is'.

    The man loved his job. He lowered a couple of thick black cords with his large, muscular hands and the platform on which he stood, ascended up with a slight jerk. He looked down. He was at least a good 250 feet off the ground. High enough to infuse any brave guy with a sense of claustrophobia. The dangling large cords suspended his platform from one of the world's highest and most important buildings. The World Trade Center.

     Washing windows, for the man, especially at the WTC had proved to be quite an intruiging job. Here every window told a story of its own. Ordinary tales of ordinary corporate slaves. Stories of people who keep their personal lives tucked under those formal suits. Yet, have to put up a struggle when it comes to confronting their self's alterego. Quite like any Hollywood flick, minus the glamour. Each window was a sneek peek into someone's life.

     The man motioned to a colleague by lifting his hands, who readily tugged at the cords and pulled up the platform. He stared at the familiar window at the 40th floor. Now this was the window of whom he called 'The Joker'. The man looked at the skinny, long nosed person seated on the cushioned seat. The reason for him being branded 'The Joker' by the man was because, firstly, he resembled the Joker from Spiderman and secondly, whenever the man saw him, he was almost always playing cards.

     Today Joker seemed different though. He wasn't engrossed in his usual gambling antics. Unusually weird, the man thought. The man looked around at Joker's cabin from behind the window. Soon enough, he spotted the reason for the Jokers no-card-playing, unusually-flambouyant mood. Hustled on the cushion to the cabin's right was a young boy of about four years. Judging from the face, it was almost certainly Jr. Joker, the man assumed. The boy ran his toy train along the fringes of the office's interiors. Joker's eyes were focussed solely on his playing son. They were engaged in the indulgance of that brisk innocence of the tot, which the man was sure, that Joker missed. Inevitable nostalgia tinged with a fatherly affection. It is such minute pleasures that renders a window washers day a happening one.

     The man was finished with the 40th floor windows. The ascending platform jostled and consequently came to rest adjoining the 41st floor. This window belonged to the 'Asian Guy'. Quite aptly, the name merely reflected his origins. Perhaps, there didn't exist anything much special about this man to even coin a name.'Statistical Analyst' said the placard on his desk in a huge font, which could be read easily from a yard's distance. So the Asian Guy usually sat there the entire day, analysing stocks, buried in bundles of papers, his thin rimmed glasses almost touching them.

     As the man realized, today it wasn't just the Joker who was in a different mood. If Joker was immersed in fatherly love for his child, so was the Asian guy. Just that the love wasn't fatherly but rather sensuous. He sat there in his chair, away from the window deep in embrace with a lovely young girl, absorbed in a tight liplock with her. His arms coiled around her waistline, her breasts tightly pressed against his lean chest. That mathematical nerd of the Asian guy, having a moment  of his own, was indeed a moment to behold. The man, ascended further up, having scrubbed the windows in the proximity, leaving the obsessed-in-love couple in some privacy they deserved.

      The window on the 42nd floor glowed brightly. He'd never before seen any activity in that particular room, except the maintenance workers who dropped in at regular intervals.  As the man leaned in closer, he saw where the light was coming from. A brightly lit projector projected consecutive slides of a powerpoint presentation, on the wall, as a tall man in formal wear, pranced about the room, alone, waving hands vigorously in air. The man wondered  whether he's schizophrenic. But then later realized that the never-before-seen man was rehearsing a presentation for some forth coming conference. He kept gesturing enthusiastically with his hands, as graphs and numbers popped up on the wall. He continued the aimless talking, stopping only momentarily to take a sip of a glass of juice kept on the table. He had a flame in him, guessing from his actions. The flame of ambition. The flame to climb up that evil, corporate ladder and soar to its heights. 

    The platform was pulled further up. The cords and cables lowered. The man peeped through 'Cinderella's window. With her amber, flowing hair, dove like complexion, and the lissome body, what else could you call that pretty woman? The man saw ribbons and oodles of gift wraps that lay scattered on the floor. On her chair, facing a huge portrait across the room, she sat gracefully. There was a somewhat big, cute teddy bear accompanying her, which she'd been trying to wrap up. The man wondered who the gift was for. Perhaps a daughter, though she seemed young to have one. Or maybe for a niece or some relative. Whoever it was for, when that tiny girl's gonna rip apart her gift wraps, she's surely have a wide grin on her face, he thought.

      A colleague from below raised his hand, hinting  a tea break. The platform was being lowered bit by bit. Suddenly, a buzzing noise reverberated through the air. Bees? The man thought. No, the sound was too loud for that. The whirling sound echoed sharply in his ears. The noise kept getting louder with every passing second. It wasn't getting louder, he soon figured. It was getting nearer. Now it seemed like a predating wolf nearing its prey. There in the distant horizon, a  black speck appeared. A helicopter! A VVIP visit? The man thought. Perhaps a presidential visit at WTC? But the black monster came ripping through the air, straight at the tower, with no intention of lowering the altitude or averting a possible collision. The man covered his ears as the intensity of noise reached sky high decibels. The whirling rotors created ripples of wind currents which shook the platform, giving it a pendulum-like oscillation mid-air, at least forty storeys above the ground.

    When the monster loomed inches away from the man, he knew he was drowning neckdeep in doom. He had no escape. They say you see flashes of images before death slowly digs its claw into your soul. In what he knew was the last few seconds of his life, what the man saw was the most bizzare images anyone could see. Images of people who he'd hardly seen through some translucent windows he'd washed. Disturbing images. Images of shattered dreams.

     Now the Joker would never be able to share those father-son moments with his kid. He could never have the rare, nostalgic moments of enjoying that childish soul.

     The Asian guy would never be able to rekindle his love story which barely took off. Perhaps, that liplock would've paved its way to something much more serious. He'd never feel how it is to feel loved.Now he wont ever walk down the aisle, hand in hand with that pretty woman.

    The unknown guy would never earn a promotion. The corporate ladder he wished to surmount has been itself reduced to ashes. That flame of passion in him would die with him. That power point presentation would never see the light of the day again. His vigorous efforts, unnoticed,would be buried down with him.

     And now there would be no one to rip open the subtly gift wrapped teddy. No wide grins, cute smiles or excitement. That little angelic moment of happiness would never manifest itself. Cinderella would miss basking in her moment of glory when she sees the toddler's happiness. And these were just  four of the people from amongst the thousands of offices and rooms the tower housed.

    The helicopter slammed its cockpit right in to the tower, merely a couple of metres above the man's head. An explosion of tremendous energy threw the man off the platform into the wide, open skies. As he plunged down the heights of the WTC, he saw the tall tower, the pride of Americans, burst into flames. Hundreds of dreams shattered. A tiny drop of tear drop shined at the corner of his eye like a bright diamond as he surrendered to the ever prevailing gravity.

      Some stories are relentlessly ended before they encounter their climax. Maybe if the man in the helicopter who ripped apart these souls would've seen what the window washer had seen from behind the windows, he would've had a second thought before he washed down all these stories like those drops of smudged water that trickles down a washed window pane....