It feels like yesterday, when I had been the bridesmaid at her wedding. The blue and white orchids, a sleepless night that saw us ending up in front of a beauty salon mirror and a photo shoot at the busy Mount Lavinia beach are still very much fresh in my memory. Her wedding is a vivid memory as I had seen her in the white school uniform with her long hair plaited into two. She would let Nangi and me pick pocket money from her bag and run to cafeteria too often. It was her last year at school and soon she became a no-nonsense teacher. Our routes became distant, but she never stopped being the caring ‘Chooti Akka’ she always was.
This was the filmstrip that was playing in my head when I saw her four-month old son, whom I was seeing for the first time. Her serenity as a mother overwhelmed me. And the little one only looked too happy to finally see the bridesmaid who stands next to his mother in the wedding photo, or so I thought for he looked at me with eager eyes when I was talking nonsense and gurgled and smiled at me when I held his tiny hand from going to his mouth.
On my way back home, I kept wondering how much she has grown up and in the process, and unbeknown to me, I have grown up too. It is quite amazing that you notice how other people change almost effortlessly but rarely your own changes, unless they prick you in the eye. When I kept looking at the little one it was not the same me who was gazing at the seeni sambol sandwiches in Chooti Akka’s lunch box so many years ago. The house too has changed; there is a huge fish tank where her organ had been. The walls have brighter colours.
Our lives will never give us another chance to be kids again, for she is a mother of a kid already. The school holidays when we ate Amberella- achcharu off the same plate or broke into the kitchen to hunt for the jar of salted tamarind are stories to reminisce in the days to come. The road on which we used to play badminton, has been widened and frequented by many vehicles now. We know our school van is not among them.
The final look at the mother and son gave me this picture of her reading to him off a book of Russian fairytales on a boring evening, with her very own voice variations for Babayaga and Karalevich like she once did with Nangi and me. The thought made me want to be away from the endless hassles of work, studies and far from the world of double-faced people-just there on the wicker chair next to her on a boring August afternoon, listening to her with my eyes, mouth and ears wide open.
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