We remember and register the strangest things. Lots of Indian women who drive wear bangles and own a set of car keys. When I was
younger and anxiously awaiting my mother’s return from wherever she’d gone- the
sound of those bangles and keys was what I would listen for.When I heard the
sound of her fumbling for the keys, I would rush to the door to greet her ( as
I grew older I would do the opposite- turn the TV off or shut the novel I was
reading and run in). But whatever the response was to the keys and bangles, I
would always know they were my mother’s.
I may hear other keys and bangles, but somehow, they always sound
different. To this day, that sound means ‘mum’s home’ and thus, even today, I
cherish it.
Some nights before I started to write this in mid-2022, I dreamt that I was in an aircraft that was plummeting to the earth. I was not surprised by this dream - less than a week had passed since a tragic plane crash in China. What did surprise me was that I had continued to hope that the plane would right itself until the very end. So when I woke up, breathing hard, still alive, what upset me the most about my nightmare was not that the plane had crashed, but that I had not made peace with my death in those final moments. I've spent a lot of time thinking about death in the last two years; many of us probably did as we anxiously watched counters on dashboards, each uptick marking the end of another human life. On nights when my overactive imagination conjured up terrible scenarios, I protected myself by taking a mental step back and reminding myself that death was inevitable. But creating distance made me feel guilty. Was it not wrong to feel anything less than all the sadness I...
Awesome really true (in my case only the bangles since my mom doesn't know how to drive:()
ReplyDelete