Grainy photographs, Rocking chairs and Old IBM laptops
I’ve recently been living in my memories a lot. My childhood has been so well documented I’ve not had to really wonder about how I was, there are so so many albums of grainy photographs. My parents keep them in this big pink jute bag. Every time I went home for the holidays from school or college I would spend a few days going through every single album. The crinkling of the thin plastic sleeves holding the kodak prints gently. I never had to wonder because the pictures told me everything. And I saw them so often that I built stories around them. And these became versions of themselves over time and now I don’t know which ones are real and which ones I made up. And now that I’m so far away from seeing these pictures and feeling that sharp edge of the plastic pages it’s been getting very hazy.
I was talking to my therapist today about this. That I find comfort in thinking about the moments that I can fully place myself in. It makes me feel real and alive. Where I can feel the floor under my toes and my mouth feels less alien. I’m going to list them down so I don’t forget them again.
- I had this cane rocking chair. It was child size, so very small. It was so small it always rocked at this really fast jaunty pace, you couldn’t actually rock slowly in it. I very rarely used it as a rocking chair though. I would flip it upside down so the curved feet were up and the back and seat face down on the floor. I would climb onto the little cane rod tied to the curved rocker on the ends of them and pretend it was a tread mill. I would grip the canes really hard, the splintery bits stabbing my little palms.
- After games time in school I would sprint to the dorm with my friends. We’d dash inside, half removing our shoes on the way, hopping skipping dangerously. We’d run straight to the bathroom and fling our shoes into the stall so we could be the first to book our slots for bathing. The most exhilarated I’ve ever felt.
- During winters in school, after morning assembly there was a few minutes before the teacher would come into the class for period 1. For these few minutes we would line up against the exposed red brick walls of the classrooms, facing the sun with our eyes closed. Absorbing as much warmth as we could on our small soft sleepy faces.
- We have a little cement pond like thing in our house. It has water lilies and guppies in it. I would kneel at it with my elbows crushed against the top of the rough cement walls and dip my hand inside. I would stay so absolutely still hoping the fish think I’m a part of their world and come hang out with my pruny fingers.
- Every Saturday during the holidays, appa would take me with him to the university he taught at. I would sit in his office and play Fashion Solitaire on his laptop. Shockwave.com had such a grip on me. It was the IBM laptop with a red rubber button mouse in the centre of the keyboard. I can still feel the textured button under my index finger.
- Every day in the 4th grade or so appa would pick me up in the early evening from school and we would go to the grocery store near our house. There was a boiled corn stall right outside it and I would get a cup of salted buttered corn. It came in a paper cup with a plastic spoon. The spoon was so uncaringly cut by machines that it cut my lip quite often. We would be stood on the stairs blowing on the steaming corn when the school bus would go by and I would wave back at all my friends who’d be pressed against the windows pointing and waving at me.
- I had an obsession with glitter nails when I was a certain age, the exact number I can’t recall just now. I would spread newspapers to sit on and assemble all the things I needed — clear nail polish, a little plate thing, and a bottle of multicoloured glitter. I would paint a coat of clear polish onto a nail and wave it around for it to dry a little bit. Then before it completely dried I would tap some glitter into the plate and press my index finger into it so it gets picked up by my skin. Then I would carefully touch my sticky nail until I was satisfied with the glitter distribution. I would do this with every nail and then paint another coat of clear polish on top of each of them. I only ever painted my left hand.
Maybe I should do glitter nails for New Years.
