The light peeps in through the carving on the top. She looks at it often enough but never really opens it.
The carving is intricate but quiet, it doesn't impose, it doesn't demand attention. Like the silence between the music, where they'd kiss against the night sky, his arms around her waist.
He gave her the box at the beginning of the summer last year. Did he know then that it was his last summer, she wondered. Had he decided at that point, that it was all too much for him?
She returned home, drenched from the rains, and found him hanging from the ceiling fan. His head leaned to one side and his mouth curled. Like he'd purse his lips any moment and say "You're beautiful, baby." And then she'd say, "Even like that? All drenched and mucky?" And he'd nod.
He gave her the box for her bangles, because she had so many and she'd have them lying around everywhere. But that never happened. For months after the unfortunate monsoon, the box just sat on one side of the bed. Her side of the bed. She slept on his side, taking in whatever was left of him. The impression on the pillow, a sliver of his perfume. Her heart would beat faster when that happened, and she would cry until her eyes got swollen and her throat closed.
Then one day, on a solo trip to a hill station, she found something in the middle of a forest. The remnants of something dark and terrible but also intriguing and convoluted. And then she brought it back and her heart thundered inside her until she put it in the box and wrapped it in a shawl and hid the box.
The crying stopped. She picked herself up. She ran a comb through her hair and went for jogs. She had a safety net. She had her box, she felt closer to him than she ever had before. She knew, if she wanted to, she could go to him.
Comfort is a strange thing. When you find it, you stop needing it as much. And it comes from strange things. Some write about it, some find pistols in odd places.
In the end, they all sleep better

The milkman died in a car crash. The car crashed into him. "This morning, around 4" his wife told us while yanking out her green bangles because those signify marriage. "What do I do wearing these now?!" She said in Hindi, in a voice that was mostly drama lined with grief. The person next to her tried to pat her back but it seemed more like tap-tap-tap with some non-gentle sobs.

The people flocked to his home like garrulous women at a convenience store. The sounds of their bereaved voices carried all the way across the street. The sorrow and the ensuing depression manifested itself in loud shouts of protest. They screamed at God that He took away their friend, a man who was not only honest but also a generous soul during cricket matches being telecast on TV. 

His kids, X and Y because I don't know their names, sat in one corner looking stricken and largely uncomfortable by the constant show of affection towards them, a concept otherwise alien.

When they carried his body, a fight broke out about who got to carry him to the crematorium. The man with the loudest voice started chanting something but stopped abruptly because someone else wanted to chant too. In the end, it sounded like a terrible medley leaking out of a radio and the poor milkman looked small and insignificant on the stretcher, amidst the little army of people fighting for importance.

I came out and saw him. He was standing at the door, with his back to me.

You aren't supposed to be here. I felt my voice tear.

I am not, he replied.

They carried him away when I was 10. On a long, white sheet. They didn't have time for a stretcher. I called out to him then, but he didn't reply. I called out, again and again till all I heard were the remains of my sound flitting about.

Don't come in. I shouted at him. Don't come in now. It's too late. I have given up on you. You can't just come along and change all of that. 

His white shirt is dirty. 

He never came back. All that I saw was a bag of his clothes. A plastic bag, as if we went shopping for vegetables and didn't know where to put them. 

He went away. 

I told myself I was relieved. I can't deal with all this, I said.

Then I threw up in the bathroom and fell asleep on the floor. 

They carry you far, in a wooden box, all tied up and pretty. You’re like a present. It’s as cold as Christmas.

They lower you into a cavity within the ground. It is slippery and we all wear scarves. Mine is blue. They took yours away. It was orange. I shut my eyes tight.

There’s a harsh wind and the dry crackling of leaves sounds like a cruel laugh. I am irrationally angry.

Your parents look like wizened versions of themselves; like figurines made from porcelain with cracks running through them. It’s a sea of colours in the middle of nowhere.

Your wooden box is now rapidly buried under lumps of semi-frozen soil. I watch, unblinking, until I can see it no more.

It’s real. It’s happened. It’s over. I can’t find my voice. So I turn around and walk away, leaving a pair of uncertain footprints in the snow.

The small things always get me.

You won’t be standing in your balcony anymore. I won’t wave at you from across the road while I wait to cross and you catch my eye. In the wee hours of the morning, I won’t hear your rubber slippers clapping against the concrete downstairs. In the night, there will be no sounds from your house next door – no opening and shutting of cupboards, or thuds on the floor from a book falling.

The newspaper carried your picture today. You were smiling and that’s how everyone remembers you. They said you will be buried today at 4. It sounds alien. It makes me lean out of my window and look towards yours to make sure that this isn’t a mistake. It isn’t. The curtains are drawn.

Everyone around you hoped that there’d be an end to your suffering. They prayed for your pain to cease. And it did. There’s only relief here on.

They never saw him again.

He left one night with a few friends on a trek and fell into a ditch so deep that it was perhaps a valley. They never found his body.

His family and fiancee rested their heads on an empty coffin and cried. They ran their hands over the wooden lid with the same intensity with which they'd have touched his face. His mother took off her purple scarf and placed it inside the coffin. She said "It was to keep him warm"

They lowered it and dropped the soil. They shut their eyes and prayed that his body, wherever it was, wasn't subject to anything harsh.
Even weeks later, a doorbell would ring and the mother would hope against hope that her son and returned to announce that he hadn't really died.

The lack of closure is perhaps the hardest thing. 

The plants died.

Their yellowing heads hung at awkward angles and their white tears stained the thin stems. The owners of the home, unaware of the death of their balcony companions, continued to paraglide and swim and shop for antiques at exotic foreign locations.

The maid came in to an empty home, still battling the remnants of the viral fever that pinned her to the bed for the past week. She looked horrified and then blamed herself for not having foreseen this. She went and touched the leaves, which crackled a little under her grip. She put a mug full of water in the pots, in a desperate attempt to resuscitate them.

The plants remained dead. The maid left feeling bad but forgot about it when she found out that her son had failed the third grade for the second time.

The owners came back a few days later, were upset,yelled at the maid and then got over it the minute the dried leaves were swept away.

They, then, sat on their sofa and looked at vacation pictures.

The dead bird

They brought down the broken bird from the shelf.

The wings were chipped in a few places. They blew at the wounds and chalky blood remains fell before them, in a fine layer. The eye of the bird was expressionless. Its head, the colour of cherries, glinted in the white lights of the room. It a had a gaping hole below the neck. You could look in it, into the dark space within.

“Who broke it?” The man asked. His face was sweaty and tired. No one answered. The children stood behind their mother. They looked at their feet and their sickly legs trembled.

The silence was broken by the uncracked voice of the little boy. “It died.” He said and thick tears formed at the sides of his eyes. His mother patted his head but that made him sob.

“Yes, yes it did. It’s never coming back now.” The father said, the anger in his voice was unmasked. He kept the bird on the table and walked away.

The kids buried their heads in their hands and cried, the guilt and bereavement wringing their insides with a tight grip.

Death is being protested.

Not untimely or cruel death. Not death that was unfair or unjustified.
But natural death after a full life.

In the darkness of mourning, there are floodlights outside to keep the bereaved company. In the unspeakable grief, there are monologues of self-glory. In the harmless life of the commoner, there is unrest and uncertainty.

These are the days when everyone walks with their heads down, questioning the city and their presence in it. 

The wind died outside the building.

The people looked at it sternly and then carried in an urn to bury because it kept rattling in a coffin and that spooked them out. They weren’t in grief because they didn’t know it too well, but they looked solemn because death is usually not a pleasant event.

The women were quiet and kept looking at their shiny feet. The men flocked around the urn bearer. They marched on with purpose.

In the graveyard, they stood next to an open grave. The urn bearer held his breath and opened the lid of the urn. There were no sounds except for a cough or sneeze from the people around. The trees stood in silence, containing their misery in silence. The people started covering the grave with damp mud at the end. The sun glared at them but it was difficult to ascertain the extent of its wrath.

Summer had arrived.

Turns out there is also an inauspicious time to die. Should you die in such a time, you cast a mean little cloud of potential death on your surviving family. Nobody wants that. The surviving family then gives in to a few holy (which is just Godspeak for fraudulent) men to help them with this trying time. For a few thousand rupees and an hour an half of chaotic prayers, this cloud is warded off.

Four such brilliant men descended on my home and filled up my living room with the smell of incense sticks and the sound of chants in a language that none of us understood. We wouldn't know what they were saying to begin with, and even if we did I have my doubts about the very point of doing all this. The chants got louder and more fierce and in the end, he walked around my house with a smoking pot shooing away the bad vibes with the same gumption that you would get rid of a rat that's got into your kitchen.
In the end, he asked that we give him extra-sweet tea and food, as a token of our gratitude. You'd think the money was enough.

When I told my friend all this, he said that when his grandfather died, the priest told them that the soul for some godforsaken reason would never find peace in his after-life. But for a small sum of five thousand bucks, not only would the priest buy him peace but also given a written guarantee that he wouldn't be reborn as an insect or a toad or whatever.

There's misguided faith and then  people buying into such phony offers. A bereaved man's expense is the "God"man's income.

Death came in the night, but stood by the door.

He watched her with heavy lidded eyes. I am sure there was a bit of callousness in the stare, but I can only imagine. She didn’t see him, while her gaze remained fixed at a point mid air. A silvery sheath had spread across her eyes over the past few months. Somewhere beneath the sheets, amidst all the layers, her tiny body was disintegrating and crumbling; all in preparation of the journey ahead with the intimidating stranger at the door.

In the early hours of the morning, he walked towards her and sat at her feet. He tapped on them, on her bony ankles, like a harried mother would wake a child. She didn’t respond. He then started to yank at her arms, slowly at first and then with an increasing sense of impatience. She began to gasp, while her children gathered around her. They cried helpless tears, while their mother who was a part of their being, start to flit away.

He took her by the elbow and they walked away. She turned around to look at her people. She saw her wizened self amidst the faces of her children, all distorted with grief.

After having walked a distance with him, she realized that she was young again. Her hair was soft and brown, and her arms felt strong and taut. She also realized, that above all else, she wasn’t scared anymore. The worst was over.

She could smell death, she told us.

She sat on the sofa, looking old and wise. She told us she has watched many people die. She could smell it on them. It was a fruity smell and when she got a whiff, she knew it was time to bid farewell. In the warm living room, this story took on a spooky note, although I doubt that was her intention.

Her eyes appeared bigger from behind the thick spectacles. Her palms were peeling in some parts, like old walls in damp homes. When she spoke her voice had a crackling edge to it. Someone asked her to stop. They were tired and didn't need to hear all that, they said.

“I am telling you facts; not some quack tales.” She said, confused by the request for to shut up. One man with a thick beard and gold rimmed glasses said it was, at best, a co-incidence. “My mother died smelling like talcum powder and my father- he reeked of cigarette smoke. There is no rule” He said. She shook her head. “It’s true. I studied medicine for long enough to know that it’s true.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I used to be. Now I write books.”

“Ah, that explains it. All you writers weaving your surreal tales. It’s fiction, Ma’am. It’s all in your head.”

She smiled. “I must leave. It’s getting late.”

She then leaned over to the bearded man and patted his cheek. “You know I am right.” She whispered and we all watched his eyes widen. “You… well, are you? OH..” He said, and his voice fizzled off.

She died the next day. The bearded man ate his words but never ate a fruit again. He just couldn’t bring himself to.

In Memoriam.

The small things remain behind.

The thin glass bangles that went up and down wrinkled arms.

The cotton saris that had softened over time; that had been speckled with stray marks of our childhood.

The books, dog eared with age, sitting next to a pair of runaway spectacles.

The familiarity will be missed; of having her in the house and of her quiet enthusiastic presence. The room will be empty for a while and the bed sheets will smell of her. In the night, I will find myself searching for the soft thump of her footsteps.

Earlier today, the thick metal shutter of the incinerator came down, swallowing her whole into its fierce stomach. I stood outside and watched her life become dust in a glass jar. 

It was a full life; one that not many people witness. 

The ashes will find themselves in some holy water body somewhere. In the meantime, she is far away - much happier and in no pain.

No tears, his wife said. No tears until they find him.

He went to work, turned on his computer and disappeared. They thought he went out for a smoke. Then when he didn’t come back until lunch, they thought he went to the bank or for some meeting he forgot to mention. By evening, they ran out of excuses.

They called the wife, speaking in a cautious tone, to see if he had gone home. She said he hadn’t and they could hear panic clouding her voice.

They sent out people to search hospitals, parks and movie halls. His wife suggested they send someone to the bars even though he had never touched alcohol. They came back without him. The police took a picture of him, a rather cheerful one on vacation, and promised to do what they could. A neighbour who dabbled in astrology said that he was in danger. He just assumed that his optimistic brethren would have eliminated this possibility.

His wife woke up two days and reminded herself she wasn’t allowed to cry. She touched the empty side of the bed and took deep breaths. She had barely slept at all and felt worse than she did the day before. Her throat closed in on her and her head hurt.

That afternoon they found him on the border of the city. He had been mugged and then beaten after. He was alive but shaken. They called the wife but she didn’t answer. They went home and found her lifeless on the bed. Her body was still warm and her eyes were still dry.

It was like a joke where no-one has the strength to laugh. Real stories do that; they rarely follow the rules of humour and writing.

The woman died in the lap of a spreading apple tree. She just shut her eyes for a second, and then remained like that. The people walking by assumed she was sleeping and nobody bothered. They just kept walking, stepping on the crackling leaves on the ground.

After a while, a little boy went and poked her arm. She was sitting in his favourite spot and he wouldn’t quite have it. He grew increasingly impatient at her lack of response and finally resorted to tapping her head in a army-like rhythm. He called out to his mother who scolded him for troubling the old lady and asked him to leave her alone. He ignored the mother and started shouting, “Getupgetupgetupgetup” right next to the lady’s ear.

The mother of the frenzied child began to panic. She called out to a few others and they came and surrounded the old lady, gently slapping and watering her face. One of them pulled out her cell-phone and called an ambulance. The little boy looked stricken on gathering what had happened.

The old lady died in a way she had always hoped to; amidst trees and concerned people. It was only a small matter that they didn’t know h

Insincere words have a lot of potential of making stomachs turn.

People die. They go away, leaving behind a bunch of sobbing people who mourn and wear black and white clothes depending on their personal preference. Some people write longwinded obituaries, about how their lives will never be the same.

Some dramatic members of the society beat their chests and scream out things about how God has been unkind to them. Some learned men repeat over and over again about a Divine Plan and how He calls his loved ones to be with him.

Insincere words reduce everything to half its worth. They make people hold their breath, like one does when walking past the garbage truck.

The dying world doesn’t need yet another fake mourner who rehearsed his grief while he put on his tie.

Some of the best stories I have been told came from people when their hands were wrapped around glasses with dark liquids. I will always remember the look in their eyes and the rising and ebbing of the vulnerability beneath. I will remember their stories, not just because their stories were noteworthy, but also because the time they told me their stories was magical; a time where for only a brief while, I walked through their worlds, waiting, watching, listening.

In the dark smoke filled room, I heard a story about guilt, the most unforgiving of emotions which found its way into the conversation, as the people at the table became increasingly uninhibited.
As a child, the storyteller had a  friend; a girl with straight brown hair and teeth that were held in place with braces. They played with each other often enough and their parents would coo over how perhaps when they grew up, they’d marry. The storyteller, a rather disgruntled young boy, was offended every time this was said and told his parents he wouldn’t marry someone so strange. “She smells like bananas.” He told his parents, while they laughed at how cute he was. He didn’t mind playing with her though; she played a mean game of Monopoly.

At a picnic, both families decided that the kids could go play while the adults chatted and drank beers from yellow cans. As the afternoon grew warmer and the parents became more animated, he and his friend snuck away to skip stones at a lake. She told him she really liked looking at fish, because “They look so happy all the time.” They sat at the edge, looking at fish and arguing as children do, over something insignificant.

One thing led to another and he told her that should she able to swim to the other end, he’d let her have some book she’d been eyeing for a while. She agreed but said she’d need to check with her mother. He knew he’d get yelled at for suggesting this and told her to “stop being such a baby” and to swim anyway.

The story got pretty predictable at this point, and the storyteller told us about him screaming because her bobbing head disappeared, the livid parents, the accusatory glances, the bloated, lifeless friend whose parents moved homes immediately after and the recurring dream ever since with the bloated dead body and the leaves stuck in her brown hair.

Somewhere in that room, we were part of his thoughts. Although the grief had been dulled by time, there would always be an unshakeable sense of remorse that someone who could have been around, perhaps at this table, died because of a silly bet. As everyone became quieter, I realized that hanging somewhere between the guilt and the regret, was a silent plea to not be judged.

I don’t know how you died, but you did, because when I last looked you were gone.
The windows of your house were shut and the red and white curtain that usually fluttered wasn’t there. I waited for a few minutes. Perhaps, you were in the shower or maybe you overslept. I soon realized that it wasn’t true. In the 2 years that I have walked by and waved you at you, there wasn’t a single day when your window was shut.

The first few times when we hesitantly nodded at each other, I wondered what you thought of me. I wondered how, of all the people passing by, it was you and I who noticed each other.

You, with your wrinkled hands clutching the window sill, raised one hand in acknowledgment after a few days. I remember the day clearly. I remember waving at you, wondering, creating several possible scenarios in my head about your life. Maybe you lived with your ailing wife, who slept the whole day. I wondered, if you lived alone, your children living in a different country. Children, who remembered you only on birthdays and festivals or maybe children who you Skyped with everyday, telling them about your day in halting but clear sentences.

That was my only form of interaction with you. Everyday, at nine, when I left for work, I’d walk past your building and you’d be there, waiting to wave at your friend. Day after day, we’d wave and smile, without bothering to take it further. I didn’t know your name and I don’t think you’d care for mine. We preferred it that way.

There was a certain simplistic charm to what we shared. It wasn’t complicated with the banality of the  details of our lives and who hurt us and who let us down.

I knew you were gone; I could tell the minute your window was shut this morning. I tried to ask your neighbours about you, for the first time ever. A few shrugged and said the ambulance came late at night and took you.

I didn’t press for details; did any relative come or did you lie alone? And if you did, was that how you wanted it?

I felt strange; not grief just the feeling of something amiss. I am not sure what I would have done differently had I known you were dying.

Then it came to me. You didn’t want things to be different. You didn’t want me to come over and offer you soup. Perhaps the morning of the day you died, you waved at me, shut the window and drifted off into a deep sleep. I know that maybe things went differently; but this is how I’ll choose to believe it happened. It seems only fitting.

Prompt word: Vermillion

The bangles in the box have been unused for a while. They sit there in all their glitter and glory. They miss the time gone by. The time when she loved them dearly, gazed at them, admired them. The times when she would come from the bath, her waist length hair covering her bare back like a curtain. She would sit in front of the mirror, the soft orange lights in the room making her looking a hundred times prettier. She would dot her glowing forehead with just a hint of red. She would dust the parting in her hair with vermillion. The tips of her fingers were always a faint red, a testimony to this everyday ritual.
The bangles were kept in a wooden box. The insides of the box smelled of polish and good times. Now they had not much to do but to sit there demurely; as the events of the past haunted them as much as they haunted her.
The call came in late one night. She sat on the bed and cried for hours. She’d had taken one look at the wooden box and thrown it to the floor. She was angry. Why did fate pick her? She was meant to grow old with her husband. She was meant to have him hold her slim waist; have him whisper how pretty she was. She sat in front of the mirror – her glowing cheeks were now a flaming red. She tore at her hairline, in an attempt to wipe of the vermillion. She rubbed it off, her hair now an angry mess. The vermillion had served its time. Now, it didn’t make her look pretty. It didn’t make her feel secure. It was just a rude reminder of her loss. She rubbed at her forehead until the fleshy part of her palm grew red. The orange light gave it the red an eerie edge.
The bangles were picked up by a concerned friend and put back in the wooden box. The box was kept away out of sight; lest they bring back memories of the tragic time
A few days back she opened the wooden box. She had a look of pain and longing. The pale blue bangles had been her favourite. She touched them tenderly, like they would break with her mere touch. Then suddenly she shut the lid with a force that caused a couple of bangles to crack. They never did complain though. They had heard her cry into the nights. Her pain was deeper than their longing to adorn her hands again. They continued to sit in there, in the dark. They understood. They understood that they reminded her of that night.