I remember being scolded by my mother every now and then for scribbling on walls. The house had just recently been painted and my mother got furious when I, with my bright crayons and dark black pencil painted certain on the wall just where the staircase landed on the second floor. As a child, clam and sensible as people called me, I always had very innovative ways in life. My mother still narrates me the story of how when everyone else settled down at kindergarten and stopped crying that I started. At this occasion, my creative self had just been ignited and all my innovative creativity found place on walls. At this absurd phase of my life, scribbling on walls seemed to have been my passion and all chits of paper, slated, exercise books and notepads alike, fell far short of the requisite decency. Every random day, I would get hit and threatened to be thrown out of the house. On this particular occasion, however, fortune was entirely on my side and instead of getting hit and shouted at, certain marvelous incidents took place. My mother, at first, came rushing at me, and then, without prior warnings, stood right still. Her eyes filled up with tears, almost overflowing, and she clasped me by my arms. What I had written on the wall that day remains engraved on the wall till date, and in my heart. The scribble reads ; ‘I love you Didu’ in my childish, almost illegible handwriting and beside it, was a flower that looked more like the sun. The kind that you see when a person with no artistic skills whatsoever, takes to painting. Fortunately, that was the last time I drew flowers to anyone. With time, I developed better ways to express how much I love her. My grandmother, since my very birth, had been an undeniably an integral part of my life. So much so that whenever there was some worth-the story-telling event in my life, she would be the first one to know. Yes, even before my mother had the slightest clue of it. She had become so much of an integral part of everything I did, that I did not even think twice before blabbering my relevant and not so relevant stories to her. From drama competitions to foreign policy of countries. From stories of seniors at school to why I couldn’t manage too many chapters of geography. There was little that she didn’t know about. Before going for certain inter school competitions, I remember explaining to her with all my enthusiasm the international relationships between United States of America and the then USSR in 1962. I still suspect that she could not make out much of what I was telling he, but she denied this when I told her and she insisted that she knew exactly while it was all passed away, she stood like a pillar beside not only me but the entire family. From counseling me when I needed it to making sure that all of the family ate properly, all was her responsibility. Of course, her skills at cooking are unparallel to anything else minutely existing in this world. The desserts that she made were so extraordinary that I so many times that I could complete meat at them. What I also kept telling her as a child always was that she should have become a chef and started a restaurant to exhibit a talent. And how I meant every word of it.
All this acquaintance did not mean, however, that I was always this nice to her on her face. Of course, I screamed at her and treated her in ways very definite when I had to. And the best part of our relationship was the fact that she always knew exactly when I behaved in which manner. So she never really minded and more often than not, accept my tantrums. She was used to my scoldings, although she made little effort to pay any heed to those.On one such occasion, when she was quietly ‘stealing’ supari out of her cupboard without any of us knowing, she caught red handed. Knowing fully well that this was one of the many instances that she did things she wasn’t supposed to and that it would be long before I got to catch her again, I started screaming at her madly. Terrified she had tried to hide the box of suparis in the folds of her sari, and when she did realize that there wasn’t a way of getting away, she had made me promise that I wouldn’t tell her- she was certainly much scared of my mother than me.
All these incidents, each one of them, shall always occupy so special a place in my heart. All this while, I had never imagined that there would come a time when we’d have to make do without her and when everything associated with her would be lost in the labyrinths of darkness. Today, a year after we lost her on the 17th of December, 2012, I miss her unconditionally. There are so many evenings when I spend the whole time weeping because I still can’t come to terms with what has happened. The chair that she used to sit on in the evenings everyday, her empty in one corner of the empty room everyday and I know that there’s only so much in time. In the room that now has nothing but darkness, there are sparks of light around. A gleam here. A twinkle there. That’s all about what life is .

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