Still life

That was a wonderful book, was Fup. Grandaddy Jake Santee, Tiny, their hen mallard Fup, and the rampaging boar Lockjaw. What I remember best about Jim Dodge's book is Grandaddy Jake's pursuit of the still life. I regret giving the book away.

I live a still life now. Curtains flutter and birds swim in the sky I see from the windows; light and shade play games on the walls and on my retinae. I await and note the passage of planes flying too high to sound their passing but that leave contrails as memory.

But there is the phone next to me. Always. It rings and memories take flight, like a flock of birds startled at feeding. I always think of the Thousand Lights Mosque then. I wonder if anybody even remembers the pigeons there.

But I was talking about memories, how they take flight, bloom and overwhelm, all in the space of a heartbeat.

How many years do you have to be apart before a voice stops being instantly recognisable? Or a name all that one has to state? The phone rings and I know it is you. I know half a dozen Rams, variations on the theme of, but there is only one you. As we talk, I remember inconsequential things, things you probably don't remember, but then you probably remember things I forgot or never gave importance to.

Do you remember that cricket game one blazing summer afternoon, when I asked if I couldn't be the good keeper rather than the wicked keeper? Or that walk to Teynampet, badam kheer and how we gave up and took the bus back home? Sucking on ice cubes?

There were the endless board games and our version of go-moku. I thought of you when I read about Shibo Yangcong-san and HEX running on the march of the ants. Do you remember those evenings of solemn discussions when we were older?

The phone rings and more memories blossom. Of the first time I wrote to her. The first mail I received from him. The first time he called.

The phone rings and my sisters transport me back to my youth, shared jokes and signals so esoteric that the original joke is lost. Leela Vanalata Mahatma Gandhi Dorasaani? Why do we laugh at that?

The phone rings and I am a tentative seeker once more, finding friends in chat rooms and remembering the laughter shared. The phone rings and I talk about poetry and favourite authors. The phone rings and there is gossip. The phone rings and suddenly I am awash in memories and talk, more memories being forged all unnoticed till later.

So what are you doing, is a silly question when you call and open the conversation. We both know that. But it is a point from which I take off and fly in memories and now.

Physically I am in my bed, yes, watching flights of birds and planes, the transit of stars at night along the dome of sky. I wonder at a flashing bright point moving entirely too fast until I remember Clarke, and smile at the satellite winking its way on the canvas of my sky. Physically, I am confined to these four walls. But the phone rings and my mind soars.

It is a still life, but memory is the flight of birds.

Cheers!