A FEW OLDIES: PARTIR, C'EST MOURIR UN PEU

The night sky was purple. The tinges of coconut leaves broke out in violet slashes that disappeared into a musty black. Down the small tarred lane I could see the yellow pool of sodium vapour light shimmering eerily, lighting up the various greens that clung to it for support. The leaves of the jackfruit tree next door covered the little strip of lawn we had, sadly neglected and left to ruin. I could see the pink of the arali flowers on the beautifully kept huge garden of my other next door’s. The wind whistled through the veppu leaves (again next door, our lawn is pathetically small and is abode to no tree), and nestled among our tulsis. I smelt in the odour of the tulsi greedily. It was one of the various fragrances that I associate with home.

My feet were pressed against the outdoor-tiled floor of our car porch; my errand of locking up the gates conveniently forgotten as I gazed up and around me.

So familiar, yet so different now. This would perhaps be one of the last times I would lock up. I would go back in, locking the door as well, put the water to boil, make all of us our ritual after-dinner lemon tea, wash up the dinner plates grumbling away freely at the lack of maids, put the day’s newspapers in their stack; I would go upstairs and drop onto the couch in the hall and talk to anyone who’d listen about nothing at all and then, ablutions done, I would go to sleep curling up under my light cotton quilt.

It was a well-worn routine, a routine I couldn’t remember the beginnings of, I mused, as I stood in the porch with the keys in my hand. I absently ran my hand over the rear glass of the car and automatically decided I would wash it tomorrow; it was way too dusty to be out on the road. But then of course, tomorrow would see me far away. The car wouldn’t matter anymore. It was my parents’, as is the house and everything in it. I am breaking away. I will go to a new home, waiting to be furnished. A few months on, I shall buy myself a new car. I shall buy my own books. I remembered that earlier in the day, I’d looked at the teak wood bookcase with its glass doors that never would be rid of dust with a fondness that springs from the knowledge that it is no longer yours. I had steadfastly refused to take pieces of furniture from the house. It wouldn’t be right. The house was just correct the way it was, though it wasn’t mine anymore, so to speak. I would want to come back and find everything the same way.

It is still all yours, mother had said, when I’d told her about my feeling like a guest in my own house. Of course, it is not mine. I had me defined in the glossy sheen of the metro I was going to. There was no little strip of lawn there nor the odour of tulsi leaves. My minimalist theme for furniture would be glass and steel. No old teak wood, with doors that wouldn’t be rid of dust.

Would the sky there be purple too? I wondered as I locked up and went to my lemon tea.