16. Revision
Rashmi enters the garden, like a person entering a police station, everything could arrest her violently. She locates black soil bed, now damp, behind her kitchen door. Is it still hers? In summer 2005, the family had sown seeds of sunflower. Nothing came up.
Those plants liked water more than just a day of passionate “Please Mummy, please let us have sunflower here.”
Rashmi picks up Papaya, Turmeric, Potato, from the place she knew was sure to be most rich in compost. Picking it all up and putting the contents inside a polythene, she looked around to watch or anyone. There is revision in her purpose today. She retrieves a letter from a gamla of money plant and pushes it deep inside the ground.
House has a way of talking to Life. It is called seeing the signs.
On the eleventh day, Rashmi and Vimbar rolled in again to take khurpi, stools, soap bars, duster, some items in the shelves of kitchen, and broom now lying in that empty room. The house was dark at all intervals of time. Different kinds darker. “It’s like dark chocolate dark,”quipped the youngest child, unable to complete how can a dark room look so different on Wednesday and Friday. Bulbs had already been taken away on the fourth day.
They handed the house over to the House Centre on the thirteenth day. “Do tell them that we won’t be paying for any more water supply or electricity.” There was eagerness in Rashmi’s voice — something she used when pulao had sent two seetees rising in the air, and Vinayak was told to sim the gas. What’s been cooking now?
As expected by the house, the dear little delicate smart, always listening to their dil ki dhadkan and not the side notes/somthings are to be understood that Rashmi and Vinayak put in their voice in order for them to understand this heartless world, children casually let it slip in front of the keyman, “Daddy, give us the paper on which you have written the meter readings.”
The keyman did not doubt the elevation level of his eyebrows at all. Instead, he was surprised about the relation of this demand to their conversation, which was about the rise of auto price, while commuting from Metro to the Colony.
The child could see the question on the face of his pakoda eating mouth. “I want to revise Maths.”
