Om Pitu

This ritual is performed in our house every year. Clearing out the mess of old discarded copies and books. The recks will be emptied of books, copies, refills, wax crayons, newspaper magazines, sketch pens without caps, the dice of games, broken scales, blackened erasers cut in the middle, little pencils with broken lead and a whole lot of such regular mess. We would classify the copies and books under categories such as those which are important, which are waste, which are perennial (encyclopaedia, dictionary, etc.), which are to be stored (scrap books, drawing copies, etc.), which are to be burnt alive (the ones those tortured us the whole year, hell yes!) and the ones which we are confused about (whether to throw or to keep). The copies which are half written would be kept aside. Then will begin the ritual of tearing out the plane pages and discarding the rest. Ashu and I would sit together in a truce with copies. Putting all our energies in tearing out the thick pile of pages. And in the end we would be proud to show mumma how we work economically! Those plain pages will again be compiled into copies which we would be using as rough copies in our next session.

As of now, I'm happy to see that reck empty for I'm fed up of seeing the mess in it for months. And guess what! I just discovered that the reck has got walls as well! Hehe...

Strange in a sense, but this emptiness in a visual treat!

My telephone rings up every now and then with its trin trin loud noise. I check the number on the caller id and instantly know I'm going to laugh stupidly for the next half an hour. She is like that. She can laugh madly on the stupidest, idiotest, senseleast thing for half an hour (sometimes even more). One day she called and I picked up. For almost one minute neither of us uttered a word thinking that the other one in on hold. And then burst out this laughter bomb and we laughed hard until I had to cut the line.

He would come to me almost every other evening silently whispering in my ear of his petty wants. I would give him an expression of disdain. I don't want to spare the little energy I'm left with at the end of the day for buying him pen-pencils. He would then say, "Pleeeeeeese didi pleeeeeeease, last time didi last time, I need them urgently, pleeeeeeeeeese.....".

I would look into his eyes. Cute. Lovely. Helpless. How can I deny? How can I say no?

I would turn around in an attempt to withdraw myself...but utter, "Hao".

His one smile is worth my thousand rounds to buy him pen-pencils.