Mulligatwany

That small gesture of dotage,where you let someone you love walk with their feet over yours,from one end of the room to the other?

The first time you learnt what a vein was it was a language teacher pointing at the green lines on your wrist and saying you call it "nas" in Hindi and all afternoon,sitting atop  the jungle gym in the play ground you traced lines back on forth along the length of your arm

The old creaky four poster bed,complete with a canopy of mosquito nets hanging like billowing veils,

in the village house where you played one summer,the only thing you carried home is the flavour of home in glass jars with pickled bamboo shoot,sun dried to last longer.

Maybe that's why your neighbours tried to grow chillies from the north east in the square of back garden they incorporated in their first floor apartment flat,plump,little fiery chillies you only had to grow to find in different places.

The itinerant peddler who sold moon biscuits door to door,vanished from the streets because everyone now wanted store bought cookies.To him,a customer was a mirage as his glass box full of biscuits he stayed up all night to bake make no sales,he is vanishing like all baby teeth when you turned around eight.You were not sure you wanted to let go of them,even if you didn't need them anymore.

The way your grandfather used to smile at you and say thank you,all he ever said to you..like you shared something special,between the two,probably not,but it felt like.He died the summer you turned three,and you don't remember the funeral or even news of the death,just a slow trickling down of the mention of his presence.Kind of like the time you had sand in your eyes,and blinded vision for a day and you never realised your father didn't come to the hospital because you couldn't see,but it felt great enough to be able to open your eyes and see form and shape and colour again.

The teacher in the first grade,at the new school who had a scorpion tattooed on her forearm,her name sounded like what you would call a pet scorpion.She was a sweetheart,who never called you off for spelling hundred wrong.She wore orange sometimes,it was her favourite.The irony that sometimes there is more corporal punishment in a mainstream,corporate school than a convent won't hit you until years later.

The second grade teacher always matched her  bangles or shoes with her outfit,and sometimes even wore flowers in her hair,sometimes.The only adult you will ever know who incorporated so much glitter into their wardrobe,ever so elegantly.She often read out stories on Friday,she called them surprise gifts and they were.She never picked on someone for spelling and stuff like that,once you gifted her hand plucked flowers from the garden that coincidentally matched her outfit that morning.She couldn't tuck them into her bun and make them stay,so she put them in a glass of water on her table,that day was beautiful.

In the eighth grade,you could never draw the longitudinal section of the maize grain right,and after not being able to accommodate the embryo after several attempts,you remembered what a teacher the previous year had told you,about how she always drew mangoes instead of the human heart in biology class and the teacher hated her,but that's how she knew she would sell paintings someday.She was a good teacher,we were her canvas.

The first boy who ever called you a princess did not come with a bunch of roses,but a single dry rose pressed carefully in his journal.It was a really warm thing to do,almost like that time your cousin said "we both look like dolls,tonight".

All those flowery patterns you'd never learnt how to embroider because straight stitch made as much sense to you as summer snow,made you realise you never actually need a lot of things they tell you ,you do.

Aubergine sounds like an English Lady to you,Augustine Aubergine.Brunette,Clementine,mandarin,tangerine,Auburn..all sound as elegant as lady names,and beneath this sheath of elegance they have artichoke hearts,and asparagus hair beneath their bonnets.So what if your name wasn't as pretty,you could always make up people in your head who will die only with your death.

Remember how,as a little girl, you always wished your name was Rose and you sat on the staircase at night praying to stars to change it.Maybe you'd never be a rose but you are not necessarily born into something unless you settle for it.You might just be vegetative propagation of a stem,tampered to ensure growth,but still alive and more viable.

I guess you never were good at thank you speeches,but in all that you never said,there were promises,

and here,you've said it all in the sharpness of a single sentence interspersed with insouciant instances called moments,because they don't last very long.