The morning after you killed yourself, your mother stood in the kitchen, her shoulders a map of sorrow, etched with the fine lines of grief.The scent of stale coffee clung to her like a damp shroud. In the counter, her
hands moved with the precision of a cartographer while the yellow pigment of turmeric seeped into the knife just like grief into the skin of our stories. It stained her long fingers, carelessly and a little maniacally. Her fingers, wrinkled and worn, handled the root with a gentleness that belied the turmoil that must have been raging within.
But it was a futile task, a gesture devoid of meaning. The turmeric was already grated, already powdered, already scattered on the counter. 
I watched, transfixed, as the turmeric piled up on the counter, a small mountain of yellow that seemed to mock me with its brightness. It was a color that seemed to belong to a different world, a world where joy and laughter still existed. But in this kitchen, surrounded by the oppressive silence of grief, it seemed like a cruel joke.
The silence was a palpable thing, a living entity that pulsed with the weight of unspoken words. Like a suffocating shroud, it threatened to consume me whole.I felt it press against my skin, a gentle but insistent pressure, as if urging me to speak, to fill the void with something, anything.   
I felt a sting in my eyes, a lump form in my throat. I wanted to reach out, to hold her, to comfort her, but my arms felt heavy, unresponsive, as if rooted to the spot.
I felt like I was drowning in, unable to find a lifeline, a buoy to cling to.
Your mother's hands continued their slow dance, the turmeric falling away in thin slices, like the layers of our lives, peeled back to reveal the tender, vulnerable flesh beneath. I felt like an intruder, a voyeur witnessing a private moment, a sacrament of sorrow, a prayer of some ancient kind i dont know about.I felt the weight of a strange beauty settle upon me, like a mantle, like a curse. It was a burden I would carry for the rest of my life, a reminder of what had been lost, of what could never be regained.
Outside, the rain was dancing in the roofs.The wells lonely gargle seemed like throaty whisper of the earth itself. The crows convened, their black silhouettes like shards of night sky fallen to earth. Their caws, a discordant chorus, shattered the stillness. Vehicles hummed in the distant. It reminded me of lost souls screaming through void.
I saw a thin line of blood welled up on your mother's palm, a crimson slash like an artist's final stroke. She didn't tremble. Nor did she tried to cover the wound.
The turmeric seemed to be imbuing the air with its pungent aroma. I couldn't stand it. I wanted to run.
I turned away. 
The golden sun coloured spice was still orbiting your mother's hands, and I knew she was holding the weight of yesterday night.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 I am longing for death.  Forever longing for it.When people around me crave to live, do everything to have a life, I could never understand it. I could never understand the meaning of their desire. I always wanted to die… slowly, painlessly, and alone. Over time, my death instinct  became an inexorable habitual thought. The yearning to merge into an infinite darkness is there, always. The swelling torment I can't put into words. There was nothing, until him, that could dilute my urge to die. I used to think I can hold on a little, until he disappeared. I was obsessed to wither completely.  Look at me now. I think I have died, when he left. What a metaphor, the old cliché, you may think. I can declare this without embarrassment, but I can't express it. It is really so heavy to be afforded by my vocabulary, thoughts, and consciousness... Many moons ago, I listened passively to Nee Mattume by T.M. Krishna. And yesterday night, like a little miracle, it came back to me...
Read more

THE BOOK OF SETHI

PROLOGUE: THE FIRST TIME GRIEF SANG I don’t remember the first time I heard Ali Sethi. I remember what I lost when I did. Something inside me— the part that kept sorrow folded beneath my tongue— opened its eyes. It wasn’t music. It was recognition. A voice that didn’t arrive like thunder, but like memory—slow, precise, mercifully cruel. It sang in the key of ache I inherited but never named. This is not about songs. It’s about the ruins they left glowing. It begins, always, with silence. And then: Ali. 1 TO THE VOICE THAT ARRIVED BEFORE STORM Some nights, I don’t know if it’s rain, or your voice pressing its forehead against my window. Ali, you don’t sing— you stitch. Each word, a needle pulling centuries through my skin. I keep your ragas in my wrists— they flutter when grief walks in, asking for tea and permission to stay. Who gave you the right to know what longing sounds like before I could name it? Who taught your throat to echo the ache I buried beneath my mother tongue? Sometime...
Read more
If love is peeling oranges, then  God is the transcultural smell  residing inside crescent of fingernails. Consuming prayers,  a bead of fragility in hands,  he tells you that : In love we are blind,  In love we are far sighted. His delicate crockeries inside  a filthy broken sink is  his metaphor for us. The way he scrub them is his synonym for violent love  and antonym for soft grief. Once in a while, the shards of his anger  turns me into a silent film  suffocating under city lights. Then you change into a morning  with mourning , Into a ship torn under monsoons, Into a broken concave mirror, Into a prime number in solitude, Into a black hole singing opera. Still we exchange kisses with words  inside  the holes on our throat.  God chain smoking in his evening gown interrupt us with a question,  What is your religion? This is when a love letter switch into  a propaganda poem  written by plum faced ang...
Read more