Mosaic floors embedded with broken bits of colourful tiles
stuck into its grounded stature at 254/4, Pioneer Colony, shone with the
perfection of a man clad in a tuxedo on his wedding day. They held some
chillness in its flat owing to the modest winter setting in, in the humid
city; bearing the silent imprints of the footsteps walked around, in the house.
Big, Appa-feet shuffling around the hall whose ever-searching eyes pored
through the morning newspapers. A pair of slightly smaller, heavier feet
previously adorned in silver anklets whose sounds resounded through the
enclosed walls, now roamed around bare; making short trips between the kitchen
and the dining table. The sari-clad mother, Amma, held in her hands tiffin-boxes and
vegetables for the day while the wrists bore plastic bangles of red,
auspicious. Oh, then there were these feet one couldn’t see as they were slipped within white canvas shoes gleaming in the tweak hours of twilight, of a young girl
in two plaits whose morning smile was as heavy as her black school bag; whose
prints followed her in a momentous memory till the balcony doors before she
wheeled her bicycle out through the hall and into the lobby of the ground
floor. The un-oiled, rustic lock of the balcony’s grill-doors smiled at her, a
hard smile visible only to observant eyes. Appa stepped out into the dark of
the eons a little before sunrise till the hallway to shoo away any wild stray
that might smell the porridge off the teenager’s scalded lips in an ironed
uniform of blue, and waved her an affectionate bye as he saw her riding away
into the dark void before the first rays of sun could reach
her. Perhaps, she could have waited for the world’s embrace of translucent golden
love before she starts on her journey. Things seem so much simpler then.
His steps traced back
with a tiring embrace of the names of his favorite gods for the good
filter-coffee from his wife and, the black and white papers of the nation. It
posed, waiting for him on the teapoy
and the teak sofa by the window. Appa made his way into the house though,
keeping his parched throat in a wait for his nerves had to be satiated with the
taking out of the trash, arranging the empty boxes on the teak-wood table,
bringing down the clothes from the vibrant nylon ropes now that they are dry while calling out to Amma for
the coffee in all obviousness of his day-to-day activities.
‘Be right there’, she
hollered and then began calling out to the early winged visitors of the crow community
for breakfast in the backyard, on the concrete luxury of a water motor sump room.
The hues of
the sky changed. The sun decided to wake up from another world, a unanimous
decision of millions of people who took the big source of life for granted.
Life, in their terms always got better when the orange ball ascends. There was
App sipping his coffee from the stainless steel tumbler, relishing it with
words of the morning papers so far favourable. Amma had begun the string of chants and
prayers that would go for at least the next forty five minutes calling out to all the ancestors and gods to protect her family. Gods. Lots of them. Ones with
animal heads, ones with human heads and a divine halo. Gods with several hands
and hour-glass figures. Lovely goddesses in sparkling diamonds on both sides of
their noses and some with matted hair. Amma knew them all, as They walked into
the house, supposedly with an assuring note to kick-start her day.
As the rays of the sun now streamed and penetrated through the curtain-less windows of the
bedroom windows open to fresh air, a child twisted her bare body to shield them
away from its small self. Her tender feet had yet not met the cold floor and
were still within the flimsy covers of the big bed. Tousled hair fell over her eyes and the beginning of the nape and no more. The skin shone with exuberant
gold as the radiance bounced off the naked back beginning to now extrude
glistens of sweat waiting to be trickled off. Tossing for air, the child
rolled, calling for Appa (who had switched off the fan) in soft tones that her
morning energy could allow. Laying still and waiting for Appa got to the little
one in all the heat the humid city could bundle up. Blankets were then kicked
in slow motion and those tiny eyes tried to blink through sleepy vision for the initial staring of the day. The thin, half-naked body in just a navy-blue
underwear with yellow hot air balloons for a print lay still, breathing. If one saw her from the door of the room, they wouldn't know for sure if that child so cherubic is a girl or boy, at the first
glance given her tiny frame and short hair. But I know her more than she
thinks she knows herself.
She’s a little,
little girl, and I've travelled through time to see her non-conforming looks, innocence and happiness in the eye, again after all these years.
The placid walls
and heavily descended golden transience opened her to an unintentional cosmos of what seemed to be real to the rest of the world. She got down with every whim of a child
and stood up on those short legs. Her
pink lips let out a yawn and her hands broke into the air, fighting with the
angels and pushing them against the rooms’ loft that she now stood under. She
then adjusted her ballooned underwear, imprinting its elasticity on her
delicate navel to view the pink band across its existence. Pouting and pushing
her hair away from her face, she took slow steps with me into the long hallway;
past the long oval wooden dining table and into the living room.
Appa hadn’t seen or
heard her tiny stature pull herself out of imagination and dreams onto the cold
winter morning until she knocked on the leafy portal wide open between his
brown hands. He pulled them close to look at the fair girl with a radiant glow
rolling her fist into her eyes. As her hair set about scattering when it met
with the morning breeze from the window by the sofa, she sluggishly mounted
onto his strong laps. Appa collected her into his magnificent arms as she
twisted and turned to finally roll into a riot of a ball, legs hanging down his
lap; a hand around his back against the red cushions of the sofa, and her round head resting on his chest. He held the tiny, little bundle of a
girl who is all tenderness and love as she swiftly fell into abyss, sleeping to
the creaky, fixed journey of the living room fan in the ceiling, throwing at
her, tufts of air.
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