madubala ~k a L

a child born to a family shorn of its love. a child born in february to a mother who was not prepared to birth her. a child whose mother's middle name is mysteriously the second name of the child's now favourite actor who died a young tragic death. a child who grows up with rebellion and anger in her fists, hearts and mind. a child who writes from the naive age of six. a child, a keeper of words, one after another, in a string of beads poring on the margins of notebooks. a child at the age of nine learns that the dictionary is any human being's best friend. a child, who from then on, accumulates dictionaries. small, big, pocket-sized. flicking them from trash at cousins' houses,from the forgotten corner's of uncle's studies. the child, a keeper of words now. the child, now a solitary weeper. the child a store-keeper of pencils, rummaging and scourging through pages of filled notebooks. the child, now a reader of words in both languages and in mathematics. the child, an avid, beautiful mathematician. the child, a practitioner of vedic maths, now and reader of nancy drew the next minute. the child, a finder of the word "lover" in the dictionary. the child, a looker of "somnambulism". the child, a reader of premchand, of manto, of chughtai, of more premchand and of coffee-table books. the child, a quiet narrator of silent lies. the child, an absorber of quiet tears. the child, the mother's protector, the silent watch-keeper. the child, a succour for cinema, for all songs not sung by mohammed rafi. the child, a collator of quiet, of distance, disconnect and of perfect storms within. the child, always looking to pour the heart out. the child, always at the behest of merciless people. a people full of distrust, a people replete with lies big and small. the child, a reveler of the mundane, a quiet celebrator of the shadows of leaves. the child a slow drifter. the child so slow in academics, fluent in the language of distance, sleep, words in hindi and english, and in the x's and y's posited by mathematics. the child, wanting to be a mathematician, perhaps a statistician. the child denied education of choice. the child molded by a people so ambitious. the child a quiet keeper of silent joys. silent rebellion pulsating through the veins. the child, a lover of enigma. the child, actively riffling through bags and drawers and letters and envelopes. the child, a child of books of notebooks. the child, a child of words never spoken, of actions always speaking loud, too loud for the ears. the child born longing, born longing for the child knows not what for. the child, a mother's child, a once ambitious mother. the child of a mother whose choices were crippled. the child who thanks the heavens every day for the health of the mother. the child, a lover of the new. a public loner, the child. the child, a grub about in the universe of the unknown delving into the known. the child, a child of the forlorn, the forgotten. the child ferreting about in childhood photos, questioning with doe-eyes where all these days went. the child, forever rooting for the past. for the abstract loneliness of the now. the child, a lover, a mute screamer, with eyes so small that see so much, with a heart so tiny and fisted [bhicha hua] that she loves plentiful times. the child, an occasion of the now, a memory of the then and a looker for the would have beens...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrgrhJbl6ag