Crows.

Exploring me — #3 The dead ansistors 

“How much do you love me?” I asked my mother as I was lying on her lap. She moved her hands through my hair and told me “as much as the number of crows in the world.”

‘Kakkatollayiram’, they say in Malayalam, is a local representation of ‘infinite number’ it derives from the thought that the number of crows in the world in uncountable. The reason why they believe that is because in the old days they believed that all those dead people becomes a crow after death. The reason why uncountable is because the number of dead people are infinite.

I believed in that for a while when I was a kid. I grow up in a joint family in the care and papering of three grandmothers. I used to call them, elder grandmother, younger grandmother and grandmother. Elder grandmother passed away when I was a small kid.

I was in my mother’s place these days. As my mother was a teacher in a nearby school, my childhood education was with my mom. One day when I was in my classroom having my lunch, I got a note from the teacher asking me to visit my mom in the staffroom. I rushed and came to know that she was getting ready to leave to my dad’s place. I don’t remember anything about the travel, the only thing I remember is reaching my dad’s house at night and I found later that my younger grandmother passed away.

Being a kid, it’s easy to forget the things. When my relatives says that me and younger grandmother where close, I don’t understand now how easily I forgot those memories. The rain that lasted two days and a wooden cot drenching in rain-those are the two memories I have about that day. After that, for a couple of weeks I used to look carefully to the crows trying to find my grandmother from them.

Today when I was walking though the garden, I found a bunch of crows sitting, in an army March way, one by one looking at me. They flew over my head, sit back again in their previous position and they do it again. Each time they did that, it made me feel that my mom saying “I love you as much as the number of crows in the world.”