I am Old and Happy!

"Was there a clarion call? Did you see the stars fleeting around?" I sat dumbfounded, my eyes wide with speechlessness as my melodramatic friend soaked me in her queries about the feeling of falling in love.

"Hellooo! Were you born yesterday? And me generations before you?" I felt the pounding response in my mind but I gave her my sincerest looking smile. "No,Dear! Its nothing like that!" I replied calmly. I wonder from where that calmness came in my tone when I was actually fuming like an active volcano about to erupt.

She took a tight grip of my wrist as if by doing so she would meet her soul mate in my throbbing nerves. Nerves! My God! I never realized my nerves were so visible! Age surely seemed to have taken a firm grip on me. Well! forty years of life is not so young for the nerves to remain hidden under the wrinkled skin.

Forty years! Time seemed to have grown double pairs of wings to take a faster ride. It felt like only yesterday I walked in the corridors of our school;hand in hand with my friend and here she was seated in front of me still looking the same while I looked like her mother(how I wish I could say like her sister!).

Marriage and Motherhood ages you more than your actual age I guess. I saw a tint of envy in my own eyes as I stared in her eyes, she looked so lovely and YOUNG. I checked myself, my fingers looked awful with its nails clipped short and without any colors. I had decided to keep my nails clipped as soon as I became a mother for I didn't want my nails to make an accidental scratch on my baby. My collection of nail polish too went in the trash bin at the same time around for I didn't want to take any chance with the chipped pieces fall into my kid's meals.

On the other hand,my friend's nails, perfectly manicured stretched out like a freshly mowed lawn.
As she lifted her hands to tie her ponytail, I saw her shirt rise up to show a clean waistline. Ech!I wouldn't dare to wear a low lying jeans like her;wouldn't people see the stretch marks from my pregnancy?

"Mama!" we both turned our heads to my two teenage daughters running towards me. As they came and hugged me, I saw something in my friend's eyes that I was thankful I didn't suffer- I saw pain of loneliness in her eyes! While mine own danced with joys of fulfilled parenthood.

Breakfast? Who has time?

In another hour’s time, people would be eating their lunch but I sit, eyeing my breakfast lying near me while my li’l boy is latched on tightly on my lap. My toasts seem to get browner and stare at me with coldness for not consuming it while hot and tasty. But what can a mother do? So, I continue to wait till my li’l one surrenders himself to sleep.
Finally! I see his eyes shut and he delinks his tiny lips from my breast. Happy that its breakfast time now, I gently pick him up but I can’t put him to bed before giving him a good burp. I set him close to my bosom,’GROWLLLLLLLLLLLLLL’ my tummy seems to have become an enraged lion while my li’l one, startled by that, opens his eyes. Well! Breakfast has to wait for some more time.
While he continues to enjoy the lap time, I gaze at his tiny face and with my finger, I draw invisible lines of love. His forehead- I can’t help noticing those lines which resembles his paternal granddad’s. It’s amazing how a child can take on not just their parents’ but also their other relatives’ looks. Then I move down to his eyes. When open, he has his dad’s eyes but when he has them closed, I can’t help noticing how those closed eyes resembles those of my sister, the sister I lost eighteen years ago. Like I said, a baby can look like the whole lot of family members one has got.
Coming to the nose, there is no denying he has my nose. How my cousin hates the nose of our family! I mean all in my dad’s family, if we don’t have anything in common, well! We’ve our noses to prove that we are of same lineage. Whenever, we’ve family gathering, we always compare whose nose is the ugliest? That’s some fun activity, ain’t it?
The lips, oh my! How I feel like kissing those tiny pink thing but I know we shouldn’t be kissing an infant’s lips. Don’t want to pass on any germs! But there is a joy in simply looking at it. Had he been born a girl I would have wanted to call him something related to that pink lips.
Softly I take off his mittens and slide my finger in his clenched fist. My finger seems like Gulliver sleeping gigantic in the land of the Lilliput. His grip tightens around my gigantic finger. I’ve heard somewhere that a child can even kill a snake with that grip. I can’t vouch for that with any proven data, just a hear-say through the grapevine.
Before I can linger with that look, he wriggles and goes pink in the face. I know he needs a nappy change. Nappy changing of an infant can be like unpacking a gift situation with all those layers of blankets and clothes. I gently pull out his soiled diaper and leave his bottom open to air out. If one doesn’t know, airing out helps to prevent nappy rash. Before I’ve a chance to slide in the fresh diaper, oh! He wets the whole set of clothing and the wetness spreads like the cirrus clouds just seconds before the heavy downpour. Before I can do anything, even his shirts are wet. So then, I engage myself in changing the whole set of clothing.
While picking out fresh sets of clothing, I notice my untouched breakfast. My cousin comes in, “Ana, breakfast ma zala?” I smile and push the tray towards her,” chon chen om das gai lunch zalay!”

My Water Bottle

Humans! We come with unique traits, something that sets us apart from the others of our kind. I was in FB chatting with some of my students. Like I always say, when your students who are all grown up still remembers you with a fondness, you feel you have never made a wrong decision about your profession. Well! That would be my side of rebuttal for being in love with my Teaching career.

So, let me go back, I was chatting with two students. Initially both started calling me 'mom'(whoa! did I feel old?lol) and we went into talking about sweet nothings and serious business of life when one of them said,"Madam, I really used to love your water bottles!"

Hey! It pulled some chord in my heart, something that was sleeping in some corners of my brain or heart or where ever but definitely was there. I don't remember much from my childhood and teenage years but since the time I was in NIE I remember having developed excessive thirst for water( thank God it was water and spirit of any kind). Being a day scholar I used to find it tiring to be carrying a bottle of water which would be an eyesore for all of my group friends. "Gachi mo, desert nalay yong yop zumbay?" My friend Sangay would always bark at me whenever she saw me taking a gulp of water from their room. But where ever I went, my water bottle came too.

Then I became a teacher and although my bottle didn't qualify for the role of a teacher, it did follow me to the staff room and to all the classes I went to. In the same school, we had a teacher who had some medical problems which required him to be taking sip of water every now and then. So there were two of us carrying water bottles with us. I heard from students that he was given the name, "water-man!" That is when I developed that fear. I definitely didn't want the name 'water-woman' or whatever related to my precious water bottle.

But since my student reminded me of it, I remembered these small silly incidences I had owing to my water bottle. It was way back in 2008, talk was going on about pay revision for the civil servants. Although all others pretended not to be as thirsty as I was, Whenever I approached they would extend their hands. It wasn;t just my collegues. I remember even my students would ask me water. Now that I think of it, it used to irk me sometimes (not really!). So, I was talking about pay revision. There was one male teacher who always extended his hands whenever I came in his view. So I told him (in jest),"Sir, This small bottle of water is not enough for all of us,when this pay is revised I'm planning to buy a syntex tank and carry water in it."

Well, that was supposed to be an verbal attack on him. But, to my dismay, he turned out be better in verbal wars than me. His answer was, " madam, since you are buying a tank you don't need this bottle, so after the pay revision, please give me this bottle." I could do nothing but hit him with that same bottle.
So many memories, so many people involved and I had discarded all those until this student reminded me. "Madam, when you left your water bottle in the class, we used to steal water and drink," and she laughs. She had her own set of people to remember, her own set of memories, all linked to my water bottle!

(If the readers think I'm talking about one water bottle that I owned from my training days to now, you are mistaken. I had a huge collection. It came in variety of colors and I would try really hard to carry a water bottle matching the color of my dress. Terrible obsessiveness? lol)

My Li'l Bird

Fly away li'l bird, fly away
wings clipped with ailment strong
caged in the bars of false hope
and unseen miracles.

Fly away li'l bird, do fly away
choose your sky
of painless freedom.
Glide in glee
flap in jubilation
get a real life.

Alas! today my li'l bird
has left her cage.
Where she flies,
I know not.

I seek her in the narrow lanes
of the streets she walked.
I listen to soft melodies
songs she connected to.
I caste fleeting glances
in the vast blue sky.

But my li'l bird
now flows with the forceful current
of swollen summer rivers
charred and burnt.

Come back li'l bird
pray come back.
Come back to sing me songs
come back to give me life
for one more time.

(I wrote this in stanzas while tending to my sick mom and ultimately bidding her farewell in the summer rainy river, found this in my phone. Missed her a lot today so I put it here).