Thursday, May 19, 2011

Rain country monsoons

Somebody very wisely once stated that, God went on a riot with the colour green in my country. And by "country" she meant Kerala. After a gap of several years, I went to my ancestral home in Parur, Kerala, this time to attend the funeral of my Ammuma. This was probably the place where I first met her, consciously. With very little to do, besides engaging in the senseless rituals, small talk and listening to ancient relatives tut, I took to staring ceaselessly at the seemingly endless expanse of lush greenery around me. The memories of a woman clad in the softest of white saris seemed to smother me, and I couldn't even cry. She probably never realised, that she left behind a vacuum in my heart the size of the universe. For as long as I can remember, she had had the softest hands and a smile that could light up the darkest of days. The sari with the blue patterns at the border, the one that I constantly tugged at, will never again be a source of comfort to me. Never again will a small voice sing songs, that brought to my mind vivid images of a beautiful time I never saw.

Somehow all the words ever coined, in any language seems insufficient to describe the world's most loving person, my grandmother. All I could do was pray hard for the monsoons, torrential rain and thunder, that would mirror a fraction of what was going on inside me.

At the end of it all, I let the tears flow as I painfully realised that there will never again come someone in my life, who will love me as unconditionally as she did.

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