Casting the Hope

Yesterday I called up my grandaunt who lives in another corner of Bangalore. She is 80+ and lives all alone. She said her routine was more or less unaffected but she couldn't visit anyone outside her street. In the course of our conversation she said someone mentioned to her that thanks to our food habits, Havyakas were largely untouched by the virus. In fact, she didn't know any Havyaka who had contracted it. Now, many among her kith and kin, including her daughter, granddaughter and myself, are married outside the community. I wanted to tease her about the fate of our spouses and children but decided against it. 

I just want to start seeing the face of seven a.m. again. It hasn't happened in a while. To break the damn cycle. I'm desperate now. 

Quarantined Tunes

Yesterday Anu challenged me to spend a day without singing and today is proving to be a very tough day. A hundred times today I've let out a song only to gulp it down immediately. So now these unvoiced words are crowding inside my head. Rishi says I should sing nonstop tomorrow. 

"Ani, what did you learn in Science today?" "That cigarettes have butts too!"

Footloose Days

My father's place near Honavar has many cashew trees around it. One of them was my childhood favourite because it had horizontal branches, which was ideal to sit and play the bus game. I would alternately be a passenger and the conductor, enjoying the juicy cashew fruit, if I spotted one. And we would hunt for the fallen cashew seeds among the dry leaves and promptly roast them among embers in the evening. Oh, the taste of smoky cashews is something! 

Maybe the other reason for that tree to be special was that it signalled the beginning of the end of my long journey from home to grandmother's. At the foot of the sprawling tree was the gravelly slope and if you let yourself loose, you would land at my grandmother's gate. My summer officially began that way. 

So I had taken the tree for granted until one summer I was told that it was out of bounds. I must've been around nine. I didn't understand. The tree was very much there! Then I came to know that it was never ours. It was public property and that year, local officials had made it clear to everyone that they were the owners of it. So I was not to pluck any fruit and if I found any seeds, I was to let them be unless I wanted to be carried away by the official stooges. Of course I didn't. 

The fear lasted only for a few days. Because the same cousins who told me scary stories about the stooges also told me they weren't around all the time, especially in the noon. So I lied to my grandma and followed the boys to the tree one afternoon, albeit with some misgivings. I looked as far as I could and there was nobody there. So things went back to normal for me and I was soon busy chatting and sifting through the leaves. The dry leaves drown out all other noise but something made me look up after a while. And there was this guy, walking stealthily towards me, just a couple of feet away. He stretched his hand when I saw him and my limbs froze. Then the instincts took over and I screamed and ran for my life. Of course the slope saved me but I don't think I've ever run faster. I saw that man's gleeful look in my nightmares for some time. 

The tree is still there but it wasn't the same anymore. When I look at it now, I only wonder what would've been had that man caught me. Would he have beaten me more or my parents? 

The Woman with a P(l)an

P is sometimes concerned about how hectic my worklife is becoming; calls from morning to night(I hate it!) mostly. He wonders if it's really worth it, considering that I end up neglecting my family. 

Incidentally, such concerns mostly surface on the days I'm not able to make tea for him in the morning or evening. 

Learning languages is fun. Now all I want is to go to those countries and speak them.