This uncle, a cousin of my mother, died from a cardiac arrest leaving behind a will instructing me to sit with this house until his daughter, estranged, married off to one research lab assistant in Florida returns and claims her rightful property. He also left a specific instruction about his last rites.
We buried him in his garden. For a while Prisha was bothered, and then the company of my uncle lying in his garden attached to the northern walls of this house ceased to trouble her, and she even began whispering to my uncle when she needs to articulate without bearing the burden of an opinion countered.
Tonight, as we seek the creatures we lost, I and Prisha adjourn our quest in front of the burial spot.
Dormant in his own garden, my uncle stares at those roots hung at his eye-level, night-blooms flourished inches above, his heaven, an eternal screensaver slowly shifting with the seasons, and he looks at our legs ascending above his sight. He forgets our distinctiveness. He disremembers what being alive means, and he remembers us for a brief moment to mislay those recognitions. Now, it drizzles, and the lights twinkle. We endure the rain and the wind. My uncle thinks we are part of the rain. Perhaps. We are part of everything, and everything is part of us.
Perhaps we should search for those creatures inside ourselves, and when we find those we should solve the mystery of our fluctuating etiquette and reactions to our surrounding.
Buried, my uncle breathes in the rain. The flowers lash at each other as if their household hosts a party, and a quarrel has sprawled over a decision regarding us watching them cavort from our insurmountable social-distance. Ah, drama! Chuckles my uncle, wishes he could invite me to observe the way we used to, like invisibles, like shadows watching others.
Test and photo by
Kushal Poddar
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