Wednesday, May 3, 2017

It was in that tiny storeroom, that she conversed with her dead grandmother.

Everything about the house was unremarkable. Patched plastered walls, creaking gate, the toilet with the wobbbly latch and dimly lit interiors.
If you could make your way up to the dark little storeroom on the roof, you'd be sorely disappointed. Cobwebs, a large trunk, old tricycles, rusted cribs overloaded with junk. A huge pile of Lakshmi-Ganesh dumped unceremoniously on diwali, year after year.
Smiling, crumbling, blessing.

It was here that she took shelter. Shelter from the constant humming of the flies, the roar of the mixer grinder, her aunt's ear splitting burps, farts and snores. Her mother gossiping away with the neighbours, dragging skeletons back to life.

It was here that she had met her grandmother. Buried deep below the moth bitten sarees and boxes of glass bangles. In stacks of neatly lined, single ruled notebooks.

It was here that she discovered her grandfather, with his monstrous moustache and ivory spittoon. Her mother, cunning little notorious village brat ( not surprising ). The kitchen filled to bursting with activity and the cows that mooed to the chorus.

They talked for hours. They discussed village politics, period pains, demanding husbands, scheming neighbours, home brewed medicines and joint aches. They rode hand-in-hand through the village bazaar. They lay on the roof and chalked out the 'saptrishi'.

In that tiny little storeroom, they broke every barrier that existed. And talked.

- Akshay

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