Just. So.

Sister’s hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer in the ileum. She’ll be released shortly and then possibly admitted for a surgery, soon.
Round the week, I’ve gone to see her twice, and sent her SMSes now and then, because SMSes are free and I didn’t know what to tell her. So she’d been feeling, as I could make out, that I didn’t love her much.
I haven’t argued, for it felt irrelevant.

Dad retired today. Yesterday was his birthday, and I haven’t given him anything. I would have forgotten completely, had I not overheard someone wishing him over the telephone, early in the morning, half-asleep on bed. But I pretended to remember it, and gave him a big hug, and he was happy. Lunch was hardly any good food. We had meat and a vegetable.

He wore a red and white striped shirt and brownish black trousers to the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India, Head Quarters, Sudder Street, today. It was office for him since nineteen seventy nine till the evening. Now it’s been reduced to a sad blue building of treasures.
Possibly.
I don’t know.
But let’s say, I know, for, he’s my dad.

He looked brave today. Braver than I thought he actually were.
With the red and white striped shirt and the bouquet of red roses and the Farewell cakes and with the cobbler down the footpath saying goodbye and with memories spilling from the fourth floor room, the revolving chair, the staplers and piles of documents in bookshelves and cabinets and computers and a few sad, smiling human beings.
But I caught him bleary eyed in the living room couch. So I said: age is not the number of times the earth goes round the sun.
So he smiled sadly.
And I smiled sadly.

Abhra has called today. He has got through IIT Kharagpur with Physics, the subject of his dreams, in the institute of his dreams. His rank was marginal for Physics Hons., and he had almost packed his bags for IISER. So, the first thing possibly he did today was call me up at about eight, when my cell was out of charge. Well, I do not actually know whether I was the first or one of the first of those, for that matter, to receive his suppressed excitement, but it nevertheless felt nice.
To be a friend, for a change.
To be as happy as I was with my getting through Xaviers a year back.

So, today, I was reminded of old conversations and Physics lessons and old days, when I used to call him, really uncertain and lost about everything, as he listened patiently. Sir and I met just the other day. He gave me Collected Short Stories by Roald Dahl and R.K Narayan’s Malgudi Days.
He somehow looked very away the day we met. Perhaps it was all in my mind or possibly, we have drifted quietly, with time and distance. But then I guess it is okay. And I guess, that’s how it is and that’s how things are.

I went to Prithvi’s place. My guitar was with him.
He’s been upset for some reasons, of late, and he’s going off to the U.S.A for a month. So I thought he’d feel nice if I stop by.
And anyways, I had nothing to do back home, for, home is depressing, nowadays. Mother has grown unnerved after sister’s case, about my physical, mental and emotional health.
The plum cats have disappeared, and with the weedy overgrowths. And beneath the snazzy lifestyles of today and tomorrow, the yesterdays have died.

So in the kitchen, there are two stoves and two racks in the cabinet downstairs, in the refrigerator upstairs, and in their hearts, and two floors in a three-storied building, so electricity bills come in two.
The little rags of home left here and there are in the terrace and the attic where the bulb is busted, so today, what I do, is:
Play the flute in some stranger’s home.
So the son and the mother stare. And then she sings as two friends stare.
Bliss, if there is something called one, suddenly finds a vent for a while.
And I no longer feel helpless about Life or Prithvi, suddenly. And, I feel happy after a long time.
(Though, of course, it’s hard to discern how the latter always ends up as this:
Stupidity? Providence? Coincidence?)

Today felt nice. My ‘student’ is well prepared for her first terms, as I could understand, today.
Only that Sushmita Aunty’s son has died. And life is a little uncertain from today. And Didi or Abhra doesn’t know how they are the closest people I have. And Prithvi’s so sadly braving it with a smile, that it feels bad.
Then, I am quite worried about Mother and Pa, for their hairs have grayed under a week, and I have a feeling they are thinking too much.


Few things I’ll never know how to say.
Like I love mamma and papa. And am grateful to a few of them, who have saved me reasons to smile for nothing.
And possibly kakima will never know that I am grateful for a few songs she sang today.

Or that, the carelessly done chirebhaja over tea at the spur of the moment I was to leave, felt more tempting than the forbidden fruit.