What are words worth?

You can know someone all your life and only begin to discover who they are more fully after they are gone. The stories seem to flow more easily, less self-consciously, without the moderating physical presence, perhaps more detailed in the awareness that they cannot be challenged and the memory can retain its sanctity. Today is my parents’ anniversary, 62 years since their marriage that rainy day in Secunderabad when the monsoon used to arrive without fail on the 10th day of June. The family legend has it that it poured so heavily on the 9th (the evening of the nichyathartham or engagement ceremony) that water entered the storage room, soaking the provisions for the next day’s big meal, causing my maternal grandmother to faint. That turbulence however did not seem to affect the tenor of the marriage which, by all accounts and my own experience, was characterized by a calmness that suggested a harmony of purpose and personality.   Not that my parents are/were alike in all way...

  What will we remember?   (written in spurts between 10 May and 30 November, 2020; revised 3/11 Jan 2021)   What will we remember? Will we have the perfect vision of twenty-twenty wisdom in hindsight and difficult lessons learned in this year of the pandemic?   It all depends on where you were --and where you are when memory strikes— sheltered in place with roof and walls paid for, your life and its paraphernalia  un-mortgaged, closets full of seasonal wear and cupboards neatly stocked; or leaning against the weak bamboo and flimsy tin listening to the blue plastic shiver because you did not have the strength or means to make a roof; fingering the notes, no longer crisp from the day’s labour—such as there is— counted out,  a measure of sweat and muscle; or left with only your memories and the fading noise of traffic on streets once meant for travel towards dreams, or dreams of work; or waiting, walking, wanting or forced to return to a place you once escap...