Childhood Never Leaves You

I had a first time experience of making a paratha today. I was on my own and that was actually good!

So I rolled a portion of dough on the flour board and it took up a strange shape, not a circle, not a square but like an irregular blotch of ink. While working with the rolling pin I could not help but reminisce about my childhood when my elder sister and I used to make bread with play dough in a kitchen set up with toy utensils in front of the mirror on the dresser.

It was the time when food was almost any colour and plasticy in texture, could be served cold ans stored for months. Good were those innocent days!

Oh, Brother!

I have one amazing counterpart; my brother, Harry. We share this love-hate relationship, the typical between siblings. One moment he's sweet and another he's mean.

Like for instance, it's sweet of him to save half a can of peach juice for me in the fridge or a half-eaten lemon tart. He just says simply, "There's a surprise for you in the freezer". And sometimes I wonder if the thing had gone bad or something but I find out it hasn't. More, I offer him the thing once again when I'm enjoying it.

Yet there is something seriously wrong with him that he continues to oppose what I support, especially in sports. At the start of some huge fixture, he'd ask, "So what team are you supporting?" and then, "Oh they're going to lose for sure" and I nearly regret telling him.

Every time I get dressed up, he passes nasty comments like, "Is that what you're gonna wear? Oh God, well what can I say." But this time I don't let him get away with it, I do my job too. I tell him on his face that he has a pathetic dress sense. The cologne he has bathed himself in is just awful and where ever we're going he must absolutely keep safe distance from me because I completely disown having any relation with him. Out shopping we often rely on each others approval though. Sounds contrasting but then that's how it is!

When he comes home, he almost always greets me with a silly, "Hi, do I know you?" and a huge poke. Once home he likes to order around, being the "big" brother, while to some extent I like to do little things for him, but by refusing first.

His thoughtful and useful gifts occupy my dresser and every time I look at them, I remember that the condition he has put on me, I'll only get another gift after I have used up the previous ones.

After a pointless argument he tends to ask, with an innocent face, "And will you still love me tomorrow?" and i say, "I'll see" but then he wins me over and I end up saying "Of course". Yet if I try the same tactic and ask him this he says, "Like I did yesterday."

Until recently he lived in a different city and every Sunday Mum and Dad would take a trip to drop him off at the station. I'd always accompany them. I had mixed feelings then, a surge of sadness, a tinge of anger. And then I'd annoy him on the phone telling he has dialled a wrong number or that "my" mother is too busy to talk to him.

But whatever it is or it has been, its something I've always thought of with a smile and looked forward to with pleasure. And I can't wait till he reads this.

He calls me dumb, he calls me crazy but does he know his affection means the world to me...

*Even though we are a decade apart
But joined together in our hearts
Stay the same forever, brother
although sometimes you're such a bother!*

<3 <3 <3

Music That Tore In His Mind An Old Wound Open

Turning on the radio
He sat back to relax
But relaxation was one of the things
He wasn't meant to have.

The music didn't let him rest
instead it tore open
an old wound in his mind
about which he had never spoken.

The melodious tuneful music
was discordant to his ears,
Incurring terrible memories
of previous, by- gone years.

Every single word sung
made him remember the days
when their diminishing love
had led to parting o the ways.

She had told him that she loved him.
He told her, he loved her too.
But in his heart he knew it;
what she said was just not true.

There had been a time when they
couldn't live without each other.
But now the very thought of the past
made his body shudder.

The way the door had banged that day
was still ringing in his ears.
And even though he tried,
somehow he couldn't stop the tears.

A Memory

I find myself there again. In the most precious treasure in the world - the reserve of memories. I dig out for some beautiful recollection and want to relive it over and over.

Its a memory with that like dream-like quality of a fantasy. I remember fantasizing about it. Its a summer morning, a garden with fresh, crisp grass. Budding flowers of yellow orange and red catch my eye. I hear children laugh and giggle. It is a most vivid recollection. I feel cheerful even though I have never been a morning person, but I'm too into the beauty of the moment than to care for anything else. Little boys and girls are chasing each other in a game. Its a happy world. Perhaps it is, after all, a scene from a childhood storybook.

What ever it may be it, it doesn't fail to bring the same pleasure when relived. That's the best quality of a happy memory.