Ammu's Stories.

My favorite kind of story is one in which Ammu plays with her cousins at her grandparents' home, and at night they fly over the tree tops, looking down on the neighborhood houses, laughing and being playful. 

My other favorite story is where Ammu is the ship captain while Anu and Deepu her cousins are her deckhands, obeying her orders, often getting scolded by her and then setting off to explore shores across, together. Deepu was also the cook because Ammu thought that that was a boy's job, not her's. Besides she was the youngest, and being the youngest you can't take up responsibilities such as cooking. The helmsman's duty was of course all hers. It didn't require much responsibility. She was only 5 then, Anu 12 and Deepu 10.

The Funeral.

The night's a bit musky. Humid and tepid with moisture, sticking to my forehead. I sit on the arm chair with its long polished wooden arms, and un stretched cotton cloth binding the legs to the back, stretching it slowly, taking my body as it's shape. but I find it uncomfortable, and perhaps not too right on this occasion. so I shift urgently onto the low verandah wall, placing my feet on the cool epoxy flooring of redness. There has been a death in my family. In my wife's family actually. Her grand uncle has passed away last night. We've all come all the way to pay our respects. It's afternoon and I am waiting in the verandah of the old house, a small petite form of a house with it's tangy, ancient smells smirking around. The house looks onto a stretch of unmowed lawn and a few coconut trees standing languid with sorrow. The men as is custom, wait around, surrounding me, a few sitting around, a few standing in the living room, the drivers and male servants mutely walking around the outside, some by the widely open gate.

The house emulates a deep sorrow. Bitterness and sorrow, the former swathing through the air, the latter being the inevitable. The women are all huddled up in the inside rooms. They've been doing that since last evening, and all through today morning. The servants move up and down serving tea, coffee and some random tid bits to keep us from sudden hunger pangs, while we await the open fire funeral.

I sit thinking about my wife. Is she crying? Does she need me to go to her, and hold her. This was after all her grand uncle, one of the few men she was very fond of. 

I think of the days, we have lived in the same house, speaking different languages. I think of the nights I've spent trying to convince her to love me. I think of the days to come, about the work that needs to be put in, in trying to get her to love me, again. I am sure she does inside, but she's a child, only human.

I lean against the verandah pillar, I move about, sipping tea. my phone rings abruptly. It's from the office.I pick up, and tell the accountant that the cheques can be signed only tomorrow or maybe even day after, as I am attending a funeral, and will be required here. He urges me in his usual style at the urgency of having to dispense money to the vendors. I dismiss his trepidation with my helplessness. 

Being in Grace.

It has been a messy somewhat in- explainable journey so far. I used to have a way with words, that I lost along the way. I lost a lot of me along the way, and turned into this incomprehensible person, with no zest for life to say the least. Existence, existing with pain and fear became my forte. The rhythm that I carried along, that used to hum within me also disappeared, and what was remaining was nothing. After years of longing, and seeking and wanting to know, today I simply cover my body in a warm shawl breathing out the heat, and hugging myself. The journey took me a long way, a meandering, tough path that unfurled into me a new life, which today gives a long meaning. The nothingness, that's where I began once again. I am yet to know what really will happen to me, but now that's a thing of the past. After spending 5 years in a little town, a town soaking in conservatism, sexism and quasi feudalism, I've become my own. I've learnt to own every part of me, to not be ashamed and to stand up. I've been beaten down far too many times, and here I am today, wrapped up in my shawl, cocooned in a bud, and smiling in my heart. Just owning myself places me in a place where there is only grace, and grace alone.