Like before, when the blue
afternoon light would pass through the yellow annealed glass. When the exposure
inside the living room was always one stop lower, the green outside was like a
safe cocoon, constantly moving, making us know that it was constantly breathing
and it was never passive. Each stimulus reached its soul, it wasn’t stuck to
the ground, it had already reached the sky.
A child inside, reflecting specks of
light from the bed room towards the living room, using glass bottles and anything
that could throw light of different colours and shapes and then there was the
using of the rusted almirah to play the role of a weather woman.
The fantasy of being a princess
wrapped in her bed sheet, using the magnifying glass and trying to to burn the
paper. It was always so cool in those summers. Quaint and slow; I wish I could
recall the smells of that time more strongly.
The mixing of sketch pen refills
in water, aware of the wastage but, I preferred the sight of the ink forming
waves through the water instead of its traditionally moulded straight lines.
The curves weren’t coaxed by my fingers but by its own will. Paint brushes;
chunks of dry water colours waiting to be crushed and made into its liquid form
again. Those delicious syrups of joy wanted to spread across into anything and
everything. The tips of your tiny fingers, the floor, the bed, the bowl of
water and all those places it always managed to reach.
Sitting alone again, on the
floor, the door may have been slightly ajar, it could have been winters,
summers or any other season but in my memories of childhood, I gave it the
definition of a summer afternoon, when the mother was trying to send her hyper
active child for a nap, the afternoon was never hot or sweaty, it was always cool,
the fan being enough. The silence of an afternoon when not many were treading
the streets outside ;slowly my mind would go into an even more silent space, no
it wasn’t morose or worried or sulking. It liked to think and then on some days
even write. Dreaming of writing a book, at the time it was the idea of a book
that seemed more charming than the words inside it.
One day I tore a bunch of double
sheets, stapled them together and started drawing its cover page. I don’t know where it is now!
But I know that I remember it, I
remember where I had hidden it. The colour I had used most abundantly on its cover
page.
I loved my dreams, i loved my
mind, the crazy friends that resided in it, the voices of so many that were
just fragments of me, of my fears of my simple avenues of happiness. The
strange games I’d play with myself, the mud and water made to look like a
chocolate, the garden where the bulbul’s mother taught her child how to fly.
Where the roses once bloomed in
variety, and in those afternoons the school kids actually bothered to pluck
those white and scarlet roses.
It’s the light; it’s the
sweetness of that time. I must have hated it then must have said that I wanted
to be where I am now. But I want the paint again, that silent afternoon with my
pain brushes and the drawing book, the messed up kitchen where I had again
tried experimenting with the spices.
The ceiling seemed even higher,
the wooden chandelier sort of a thing hung, and as it hung, it reflected the
light from the tungsten bulb. It even did a slight dance of sorts when the
cooler was on. The big old cooler. At night when I didn’t feel like falling asleep,
I would close my eyes, and start to walk towards the cooler, simply listening
to the strength of its wings, the wind it could create. Imagining a dark night
in a forest, a storm, a tornado, anything that would delight me and for some
reason everything did delight my mind.
It was still tender not just in
age but in case of memories. Time hadn’t passed yet, she hadn’t learnt to look
back and make a list of things that she should
have done. There was just the present.
The silent afternoon that moved
so slowly and opened into an evening, out of home with others, 4 yards away. A
shout away, the mother could see her through the kitchen window if she
strained.
But you forget, I write this for
my home, not for what happened outside the gate or outside the garden, so this
story must end when the afternoon ends.
And the afternoon has ended indefinitely for
now.
I’d like to sleep in the cool bed
sheet, almost as cold as the floor again. But it never is the right
temperature, is it?
