The lean girl diaries.....

Calling a place home comes easy to me. Most houses that I've stayed in, fortunately, have become home; so have many people, and they continue to be. But there is one image in particular that comes unbidden every time someone utters the word home……that of a seven year old running around in a mosaic floor (all Indian millennials will know the exact pattern I'm thinking of), darting from room to room, looking at the old TV, trying to scale the bookshelves. She appears to look around the house as if it holds answers to all the mysteries in the universe, as if she didn't experience the greatest loss of her life little less than a year ago in that very same house. I definitely came into my own person in college but I think I started to see it take shape in that house. Almost like an unfinished Monet painting, or one that was looked at too closely - as what looked like random paint blotches, waiting for an experienced observer to view it from a distance to get a perspective on the...

I've never seen love age. When I say love, I mean love between two people in companionship. My dad died when I was young and so did my grandfather. So sadly all I saw was a pair of women who were mourning their love. Don't get me wrong, their love didn't fade way. Amma and Appachan's love lives through the fond stories my mother tells and the little private smile she has when I call her "aanoo" (ആനോ) - the name my dad used to call her. So I've seen long lasting love; but that love is a longing, a lament.  My parents had a difficult and impoverished childhood, which is probably why I don't see a lot of friendships that stood the test of time. For some weird reason, none of my siblings also has friends that could show me how love travelled through life and aged. Which is why the videos of old couples bring tears to my eyes - to see the fortune of being in love and being reminded that you get to share your life with them everyday. The little cynic in me ...

I am my mother's daughter. I look like my dad, I speak like my dad and many say that I behave like him too, but I am my mother's daughter. It was easy to call my dad a role model, because I only knew him for 6 short years and I guess death does tend to soften memories. I've only heard of great things about him - from my mom and everybody else. There was an altar of legacy built around him where I had to be the perfect copy to carry the torch forward. With amma though, I could just be. I could be whatever I want and would be accepted for it. Amma tends to downplay her role in building the person I am now. She thinks genes and 6 years of inane babbling with my dad has contributed to my personality more than 23 years of consistent effort she has put on me. Everything I know about love, commitment, kindness and a hundred other things are solely because of her. There are not enough words to explain everything she has taught me and how much I love her; but words are the only thin...

My sister had a baby last month. This tiny ball of sunshine has since occupied my life completely. Probably because now, I'm older than I was when all my other siblings had babies, I am much more directly involved in the care of baby Miriam. While I've always been obsessed with babies (if you want to kidnap me, showing cute babies is the way to go), it's pleasantly surprising to have a baby love me this much. Yup, I said it. Miriam ADORES me. In a big way - stops crying when she hears my voice, smiles when she sees me in the morning, sleeps easily in my arms, makes it obvious that I'm her favourite - BIG.  It is humbling as much as it's brag worthy. Being the youngest in the family with a considerable age gap meant that I was often too young for the milestones that my siblings were at. I wasn't old or brave enough to hold tiny babies, giving proper support to their neck. My favourite experience was holding the babies when I was sitting for a few moments and just...

(I actually wrote this for an assignment for a philosophy course - your autobiography from the POV of a body part) I grow about a tenth of a millimeter per day. And I have regrown countless times, so a different version of me has seen her everyday, I suppose. She leaves me be, when she's away from home but cuts me down as soon as her mother comes anywhere near a hundred meter radius. It was fine when she was 5, but now that she's in her early 20s, it's a little silly how decisions about her own body are still dependent on other bodies and minds. The way she's groomed me from when she was a child shows how she grew up and what she grew up to be. The little girl who used to sit with trembling fingers expecting pain as her mother cut her fingernails was a picture of a mess. We were always caked with dirt and if let loose, was coated in spices which amma had to quickly wash off before they inevitably landed in her ear. Always (trying to be) an overachiever, she figured out ...

Last week, I gave a eulogy for my grandmother. I was in jitters the day before. It was unlike any speech I had done before.  In my head, my word vomit in those 5 minutes would determine how she was remembered by the people who came for the funeral (at least the ones who did not know her that well). I had to verbalize a fitting legacy. But more importantly, in a childish sense,  it would be the last time that I would get to talk to her - face to face - even though I knew that she couldn't possibly hear me.  Following the funeral, it was little difficult for all of us to look at her things - her sarees, her airbed, towels......An absurd thought occurred to me then. What if she had a phone? More specifically, what if she had a phone number?  If she had a number, then it would soon get deactivated; after a point of time, it would be reassigned. What would I have done then?  Message her everyday, only to get a "sorry,  wrong number", one morning in return? ...