My hands look like that of a seasoned farmer's...tanned & hardened. It once touched my granma's forehead during her last days...Wondered if it felt soft on her, I saw her tears slipping on her wrinkled skin. I could almost remember how her skin was like..thin, plastic like pasted on bones. She didn't even recognize her own granddaughter...Made me smile when she kept asking me my name. And I answered,' Nangi nashune' and she'd relaxed and lie back again on my lap..My head felt dizzy as I sat there, trying to give her the warmth of the sun on a cold winter day to her body while I shadowed her head with my back. We value those people more when we loose 'em, don't we?

I can almost club my life into a 15 mins trailer.. I could see a much younger me sitting by the pond, using ashes to wash the plate I ate on after I came back from school..The daal looked like jello during those cold evenings! Have u seen insects with thin long legs standing on green water amidst the water lilies? They create small ripples, tiny little ripples that fades off before it reached the edge of the pond.

Then I see myself on the school bus, holding on to the seat rail trying to stop the bus because I didn't wanna go to school..Then, mom teaching me 2+5= 7, dad only taught me how to draw a rabbit out from 2. Checao taught me how to pronounce 'Paddy' she said it rhymes with 'Daddy'. It does today. Then I felt mom's hand pulling me, telling me in her mad voice to say goodbye to that stranger covered in white clothes on the funeral pyre.. Mom, I stopped praying from that day after I saw you sprawled on the floor in front of that thing we called God. See!! it was just pieces of clothes & earthen pot with rice in it... What else do we pray for? Lotteries.

And I recall the chilly water of the river when dad pushed me in it. We all resurrected as a different person, with colder hearts as we came out of the water, purer..

18 years old and I am walking outside my college after a fest, someone won the rose queen title..Lol.I lost. She had a boyfriend who got her a big bunch. I walked out with my cousin when it started raining softly. I did feel a little lonesome that day & I asked, 'When the hell are you coming?' You came in bit & pieces, sometimes in ash's face when he sleeps peacefully, sometimes in Indira's eyes, in Robert's obsession, sometimes you felt like the tip of his cold nose when he kissed me..I want you to stay with me forever, kalte Nase, like you do on my sketch book or on my mind. I think I ve to pay the ticket of long hours and live thru what they call life to know how the trailer ends.