Only If I Could

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 possessions that I had grown up with.

          My girl! She was angelic and humane. Her hair flew in the blowing wind and her slender fingers lay still on my palm. Years had played truant on her colours but not her plastic being. Those sparkling eyes had seen me play, those ears had heard my childhood whims. I fed her, slept with her, bathe her, loved her, scolded her and had thrown her away in wild fits of childish frenzies. Still, those eyes never shed a tear. An epitome of patience, I sensed in her.

          Only if I could breathe life into her, I could hear her speak now. But once I used to hear her unmeasured words that sounded like drops of rain that fell on my window sills; her chuckles and our giggles. Not anymore. But I dare not look into her blue eyes and question the silence for she will continue to smile at me.