Memories

The photo came silently, innocently, unceremoniously. To herald the return of the prodigal grandson. 

The furniture cleaned and arranged neatly. The dining table resolutely standing in the middle of things. Like her, proudly. Refusing to let the isolation of the last year and more show. 

Instead, standing testimony to decades of conversations, food, laughter and fights. The floor was welcoming, as it has always been. The room well-lit. Reminder of the times when the curtains would always be drawn, to keep the light out. The light hurt her eyes. But why? Did it remind her of the final light that would come to take her away and she was not ready for? Did it seems to bright for her tired eyes? Did it remind her that the world outside had changed so much. The people around had changed so much and that she was unable to change along with it? 

The bright red sofa replaced the low diwan that was there. Where many an afternoon I lay next to her. Sometimes her fractured body and wounded spirit kept me company and found some temporary warmth. Just lying down next to her, holding her bony fingers would bring in a sleep so deep that I often long for it desperately. 

I wonder if the TV is there. Screaming out various things in succession over the years. From the Bold And the Beautiful, to films played on a VCR connected to it, Tamil serials about the natural, the supernatural and the unnatural, screaming news anchors spewing hatred, cricket and tennis matches, with a commentary outside to match the one inside and more recently, religious programmes, hymns and sermons. 

The bookshelf where for many years somewhere in the last three decades a whiskey bottle shaped like a khukri adorned tested the resolve of the young and the old until it was emptied under the coconut tree behind the house. Ever wondered if the coconuts from our house are intoxicating? You may be closer to the truth than you think! 

A story about Abe Lincoln, a woodwork of Krishna steering Arjuna's chariot in the battlefield, the rabbit made of white beads and the photo of that white bearded, man - sage-like visage - and a smile as mysterious as Mona Lisa's. 

And two more recent additions - which sometimes worked and at most times didn't. One was a monitor reflecting flickering images from outside - a young couple caught canoodling on a bike parked outside,  cat curiously peering at something, an auto zooming past, an unknown car blocking The gate nonchalantly, and more. 

The other was a set of handphones. The receiver of her wrath, the bearer of many stories, the constant companion when it worked as well as when it didn't, a fixture, much like everything around, including her. Only it seemed to have outlasted her, at least in its physical presence. 

If only walls could speak. So much would be said, including many salacious accounts that will not pass these lips, tragic tales of death and disease, conspiracies, stories of friendships, inventive abuses, naughty pranks and myths and mythology. 

As if it is all not a myth. There until she was. Gone after she went. Did it even exist? Or was it just, like everything else, a chimera with a promise to last forever.