Nayra's birthday yesterday.
There is a special bond.
I went to India five years ago, broken, confused, unable to cry.Stunned. Frozen.
Nayra was three months old.
Her mother brought her and put her on the sofa besides me.
I looked at her.
A baby, three months old.
Bright eyes,contented. loved.
Start of a new life. years stretching ahead.
one life ends at 88. another life begins.
Now five, she will have a memory of me.
She will remember me as someone who lived very far away, as afar as Delhi is fromLucknow. She calls it nakhlow.
How could she have an idea of the distance between India and US.
She will remember me as someone who brought glittery gifts, lighted up balls, necklaces, dolls.
That is enough for me.
I have no memory of my father. A recreated memory , from my mother's accounts.
I am almost three. There is a solar eclipse, an armchair. Someone is sitting in all white clothes and opening the cages of little lalmuniya and letting them fly out, one by one.
I stand next to him, looking bewildered at the birds flying out of the cages.
Is it a true memory? Recreated. I don't know.
Just one evidence.
that I existed in my father's universe.
Mother dies. I fly out to India, praying frantically that She remains alive so that I can call, Mother, I have come.
But that was not to be.
We open her trunk.
She hardly had anything. Just a few clothes. a few notebooks, a few religious books.
and four letters from father. Just one line, Usha must be talking now.
I wanted to take that letter, but hesitate, I have taken almost everything, her books, diaries. I asked Parul much later about my mother's trunk and she said , termites ate everything so I gave that trunk to that junk man.
I was stunned. My father's letter and in it my name Usha must be talking now.
Life ends with a whimper, not with a bang. Sorry TS Eliot for botching up your famous line.
There is a special bond.
I went to India five years ago, broken, confused, unable to cry.Stunned. Frozen.
Nayra was three months old.
Her mother brought her and put her on the sofa besides me.
I looked at her.
A baby, three months old.
Bright eyes,contented. loved.
Start of a new life. years stretching ahead.
one life ends at 88. another life begins.
Now five, she will have a memory of me.
She will remember me as someone who lived very far away, as afar as Delhi is fromLucknow. She calls it nakhlow.
How could she have an idea of the distance between India and US.
She will remember me as someone who brought glittery gifts, lighted up balls, necklaces, dolls.
That is enough for me.
I have no memory of my father. A recreated memory , from my mother's accounts.
I am almost three. There is a solar eclipse, an armchair. Someone is sitting in all white clothes and opening the cages of little lalmuniya and letting them fly out, one by one.
I stand next to him, looking bewildered at the birds flying out of the cages.
Is it a true memory? Recreated. I don't know.
Just one evidence.
that I existed in my father's universe.
Mother dies. I fly out to India, praying frantically that She remains alive so that I can call, Mother, I have come.
But that was not to be.
We open her trunk.
She hardly had anything. Just a few clothes. a few notebooks, a few religious books.
and four letters from father. Just one line, Usha must be talking now.
I wanted to take that letter, but hesitate, I have taken almost everything, her books, diaries. I asked Parul much later about my mother's trunk and she said , termites ate everything so I gave that trunk to that junk man.
I was stunned. My father's letter and in it my name Usha must be talking now.
Life ends with a whimper, not with a bang. Sorry TS Eliot for botching up your famous line.
