tulsi

". I want to be left alone to my devices. I want to stare at the moths that come and go through the door. I want to put my legs against the wall and scratch that itch till I bleed a little. I want to play with my idle, frail eye-lashes. I want to turn pages of the book in hand without reading. I want to make notes, relentlessly. I want to take multiple tea-breaks, and walk in this sexagenarian house. I want to watch the ants as they crawl up the leg of the extra wooden bed in the already cramped middle room. I want to crease my forehead into funny shapes and then just stay like that to see if any permanent lines are formed.

I want to be. That's such a big price to ask for? Is it?

The phone buzzes, a cousin's call. I answer almost without a second's wait. She's crying heavily on the phone. Heaving tormented breaths over the speaker. I distance the phone from my ear and wait for her to speak.

In the meanwhile I watch my left eye's lashes cast a shadow on the turmeric hand-woven bed cover. She talks about illness, she calls out loud the angst of a grummy twenty year old. She's tired. A life too mature with illnesses and hospital visits. I look at my right leg, behind the knee, in that sunken pit I'd scratched a bit too hard. A drop of blood waits for me to ooze it out.

Aloof from the dangling weight of festivity and fake celebrations of a festival that has no meaning I wonder if am too cynical for my age. I pack my bags with tee shirts as old as my high school pass certificate. The morning train must be caught, I tell myself, and deplete into singular oblivion. The call is still on..."