Dregs of Yore

I have seen men weep in the dirt and laugh through broken teeth. I have seen children wrestle buffaloes in monsoon mud, not because they were told to, but because it seemed like fun. And somewhere, walking the thin line between sorrow and joy, I have come to believe that the gods must be smiling. I have heard it said, by men whose faces were as brown and lined as walnut shells and who sat cross-legged on jute charpais in their courtyards, that God does not create out of duty or requirement. The logic behind this is that God, being complete and infinite, must not have any need left unfulfilled. So, he creates out of joy. They said the world was played into being, like a child makes a world from dust and pebble and breath. In the Hindu conception of the world, there is a word: leela . It means play. But not play as in diversion or recreation. Not the kind of play that comes after work. It is the play before work, beyond work—the kind of play a god would invent if he had no need to prove ...

Of late, there has been a feeling settling in my chest like dust in an empty room—soft, silent, and certain. It is the quiet realization that my memories are not permanent things. Not chiseled into stone or sealed up in iron-bound books, but written in pencil, the graphite growing faint with each passing season. I am aware, now more than ever, that what I remember will not be remembered for long. I think of my parents often. I remember my mother in her early sarees —floral, soft, like the curtains of a spring house. As the years passed, her colours dulled. Maybe they matched her age better, or maybe they just matched her mood. I see her now in my mind, young, barefoot and newly married, in a kitchen not yet hers, lifting a spoon to her mother’s lips and asking if the peas were soft enough. What was her scent like?  Turmeric?   Talcum powder? Or those white rajnigandha flowers she loved so much? I don’t remember. I think of my father and the way he used to hum when he shaved, a...