It still hurts.
The pain I thought long gone
Still hurts.

I buried the pain deep
In the darkest recess of my heart.

I thought I had forgotten all about it.
But how do you forget a thing you know you have forgotten?

The pain is back and it’s just the same.
I turn to words – trying to write away the pain.
How I wish I didn't have to write this.

One of my earliest memories from my childhood is Appa reading out aloud to me and my sister. He would usually read from one of the numerous books he bought for us – usually Children's books originally in Russian translated into English or mythological books. He would sit on a chair. Madhu (my sister) would sit on the floor and I would sit on the arm rest, cuddling up to Appa.
And I hated it!
My sister would look up to Appa, engrossed in his narration. And I would have finished reading the page and would be impatiently waiting for Appa to turn the page. Appa however wouldn’t be hurried into anything (another trait I seem to have caught from him - I have to do things at my own pace - I will not be hurried/slowed down!) and he would read out aloud, pausing at every comma and full stop and stressing at significant places. His intonation of speech was amazing. In short, a lesson in prosody.
However, I never had the patience to appreciate any of it! After reading the current page, I did start fidgeting; I already knew what was in the page and wanted to know what was on the next. Madhu however would hang onto each word of his and would listen in rapt attention.
Appa soon realized that it was not my obsessive love for him that made me sit so close to him. And he hated the fact that I was sneakily peeking into the book. He made me sit on the floor from then on, but it was never the same again. Soon he stopped doing the read-out-aloud sessions and I went back to reading on my own.
But Madhu missed those sessions and so did Appa. I think it hurt Appa more than anything else.
Appa still tries to read out to me, from the Business line or one of his published papers. And I still fidget!!
Amma never took a picture of this, but I have gotten it in my head. I just need to close my eyes and remember.

PS: How I wish I had the sense to sit back and enjoy back then. I still can't do that!!

The other day I asked a friend to stop brooding. And was magically transported back to class nine, KVAN.
It was the English class and PG, our English teacher was having a difficult time managing us(as usual). We were supposed to dramatize one of the English plays in our text book titled Meera Bhai and PG was randomly picking up people from different groups and asking them to play bits from the Play.
I was in Group Two - I was Meera Bhai, Nithin was the Rana, Suba was the Rani, Aravind was Bhojraj, Prasad was Jaisalmer, Deepika was Meera's nurse and Ramya was Sanjogta (Meera's close friend and lady-in-waiting).
The scene we choose to enact was the one where-in the Rana tries to reason out with Meera and get her to act 'normal'. He tells her to play with the children and knit and sew with the women.

Nithin asked me to stop breeding. Yea, you got that right. He was supposed to say brooding, but it came out as breeding. I thought it was so funny that I started laughing my goofy laugh and the whole class was in splits too. I soon realized that the joke was on me, but it was way too funny for me to stop laughing!

Like I tell you, Being N!V! ain't easy!

PS: PG thought I did make a better Rani than a Meera. I agreed 'cos I didn't want to be asked to breed, not again. I wore a parrot green sari and towered over the Rana. Meera forgot her dialogues. I forgot to face the audience while saying my part and when I remembered, I was talking to the audience and not to the people on the stage! All of us were just mouthing the dialogues and none of us got the chemistry right. I was miffed because I knew this was going to happen - I was always shepherding people into the rehearsals and nobody ever took the rehearsals seriously!

And yet, this is one of those things in my life that never fails to bring a smile on my face.