Cache

It is still too early to say what memories will crystallise around you. For now, it is the bedpan not emptied, the smell of ointments and pills in your room and your waning voice damning the world. But once my tears have dried and the puja flowers have withered, perhaps I will freeze you at an age when you looked better.

Will it be the black and white honeymoon photos taken on a boat in the lake in Matheran when you first let me down ( couldn't you find any place cheaper?), and the mundan of our first-born where your mother made such a fuss and that stupid photo from the wedding of some cousin of yours where your middle-aged, balding face and paunch made me fall out of love with you for the first time?

And yes, the shaadi-ka-video, the cassette recording of our kid reciting nursery rhymes and certainly all the unrecorded fights (you never earned enough, drank too much and never bought me enough flowers) and that ne'er-do-well son you gave me who lamented loudly at the funeral and your sisters—let us not talk about your sisters. No I will not box you into anything; for you know when I too die, I wouldn't like being framed in an 8" by 10" surrounded by withered flowers.


frogpond
—a new croak
joins the chorus