The
smile on her face was still the same, as I had seen her on my 7th
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.
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