A DIFFERENT BEAT

The smile on her face was still the same, as I had seen her on my 7 th birthday.   But the red lipstick had lost its glow and the fair skin looked a bit tanned. It was not the red glowing sun that had baked her brown as she had been indoors for more than a dozen years. It was the dust and years of negligence. I had once shared my childhood with her. The red saree with its golden spots carefully spun had given bright colours to my dreams I had woven on yarns of childhood games. She looked like a bride in her bright red saree celebrating life with golden bangles, tingling the bell of festivity. She smelt of jasmine.           Now, her beauty is a blurred reflection of the past. The bangles are broken and red saree has faded. She now smells of kerosene that I had once accidentally spilled on her. Her smile did not elicit a smile from me. But I was tempted to pick her up from my closet. There she lay for seventeen years, uncared and ignored among a disorganized collection of posse