Re-membering

It was not as bad or worse than hearing about A.'s heart attack, but my fall yesterday tore open a wound that had just about healed. Using a path I usually walk through in the house, I was taking my tray laden with a plate of chawal daal and some qeema into my room because I do not like being around my mother and sister when they are watching soap operas on one of the Spanish channels. Next thing I know, crash, boom, there goes me, and all the food scattered on one side of the carpet. I think I was more upset about wasting the food than I was about my knee. The number of times I have fallen and bruised these knees - with the scars to prove it. Oh well, I was not destined to be a model anyway.

Ma was so sweet, she brought my dinner to the room for me tonight. She was a little afraid I would repeat last night's episode. I think after that, I am trying to lift my feet even higher than usual. It makes for an awkward walk, but heck, I am walking!

--
I have not seen A. in years. I have spoken with him a few times. We cousins did not always communicate directly with one another, but mostly through our parents, until recently. Old quarrels, wounds, the perhaps not regular extended family thing. When we are all together, I am certain we will get along famously, or at least try to, but until then . . .

I mentioned before that he was the first boy with whom I fell in love. Or what I thought "in love" was at the age of eleven. He was really adorable as a boy and grew into this beautiful young man, with features very much like our Nanaji's. For a while there, he was always studying, at his desk, while the rest of us were running around, but when he got to play taash with us, or indulge his younger sibling and cousins in a game of "Teelo Express", he was so much fun. It was even more fun when he'd give me a break if he saw me, so I could run and hide again. And of course, we were all traitors, we'd cut deals with him, or whoever was the searcher by revealing the hiding places of the others.

He was one of the few, at least at the time we all were together, that did not indulge in the family gossip, and the "kal suna tha ussne ne usske baaray maiN kya kaha?" dramas in which some of us were involved - and have never quite escaped.

I either told him on my fifteenth birthday, or a little before that, via a letter, that I had feelings for him. Until I was twenty, I lived in hope. One time he wrote to me and told me he loved me too and I was beyond ecstatic. Until I never heard from him again, and realized he only meant that as a cousin-brother to a cousin-sister. And life went on. I got busy with college, and my life and he got busy with his, and fell in love . . . . When I think about it, it is a good thing he did not fall in love with me, and we did not get married - six degrees of separation and all that.

He was a good son to his mother, but he had his "rebellious" moments, as well as his naughty ones. Like in the afternoons, when Khalaji would take her nap, and almost always wanted one of her children to massage, or as Ma translates directly from Urdu, "press" her legs. Usually if A. was around he did this, but there was this one time, when he was in the room opposite hers, and she called out to him. He looked at his sister and I, put his finger to his lips and quietly snuck out the door, leaving us to tell a groggy Khalaji that he was not there. They were very close and he was there for her for a good part of her illness, though not when she passed away.

--
Ma is now the mother-figure, just as she has always been, to the children of the siblings who are no more. They do not reach out to her often, and she cannot as often as she would like. The last time she talked to A. before yesterday, she lamented that she could not talk as often as she wished with her nephews and nieces. To which A. replied:

"Khalaji aap kya baat karteeN haiN? Agar phone karna ho, tau unko karna chahiye!"

Ussne Ma ka dil khush kar diya.

--
I have been thinking about him. I know that he is going to get better. As I told some friends, he has a really positive attitude, he does not let setbacks get him down. And he loves to laugh. He makes us laugh whenever we speak, and I know his looks might have changed just a little, but when I think of him laughing, I still picture him from those days when I was nineteen, and he was twenty-one, and we laughed at our silliness while playing a version of Scrabble or Concentration - those summer days were the last time we saw each other.

The bus passes through the city in which he lives, and I am thinking about changing my itinerary on the way back from my cousin's wedding, to see him and his wife, and members from his side of the family. I am hoping that it is possible. I shall find out within the next few days.