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.