The sky is dull black

The sky tonight is dull black. A dithering wind did not blow away the clouds. It will be a gloomy Wednesday morning tomorrow - I will wake up, read a book sitting on the toilet seat for ten minutes, then I will look at the watch and rush up to take a shower, enclosed in a glass cabin that gets covered with steam and makes me look more attractive than I am in a luminous yellow light that floods the wide mirror on the front. Ammu will knock at the door and remind me that I will be late to work. I will quickly step out of the shower cabin; carefully place my feet on the blue mat, careful not to spill too much water on the floor. I will spread a palmful of cream, and apply it on all parts of the body accessible to my two hands. The clock will have ticked another five minutes. By then I will know that I will be late to work.

That will be tomorrow.

Tonight, it is a dull black sky. Not that I can see the sky – the blinds are pulled down and they shield the view from me. In the morning, Ammu rolls them up and looks out at the swaying green leaves or the brazenly oversized flowers. But before the night arrives, she pulls down the blinds. Keep the darkness out, she says.

Ammu is in the other room, asleep. Asleep, I know, because I hear her gentle snores. They are not like the loud snores of fat people. Just soft, intermittent snores, once every five, maybe seven, breaths. When I don’t hear her snore, I know Ammu’s eyes are open and looking at the ceiling. She says she sees flowers in the ceiling. When I look up, I see only the white paint.

I was looking at the ceiling with Ammu sometime back. It looked even more impermeable than the blinds, so I kissed her on the forehead. She held my hand for a while. I said, dream of me. She kissed my fingers and I left.

Now, I sit next to the blinds – one horizontal white layer upon another, covering each other at the edges, making sure that what remains in the room, remains in the room. My fingers twinge with the desire to slide into the blinds and split them apart. It feels that if I look out into the dark abyss, perhaps, I will travel inside, somewhere deep inside. I feel the twinge.

Ammu loves light. Always has. In the days gone by, they said she had a dazzling smile. When we gathered for the photo session – I, wearing the grey suit, Ammu, dressed in the pink and orange dress, my friends, her cousins, her friends, my cousins, and many others, all standing by the bride and the groom – they said she had a dazzling smile. But it was in her eyes that I saw the light; even in the darkness of our room that night, much after the photo session, when I whispered to her some tribal chants. She laughed, and her eyes dazzled.

This room is the living room. If Ammu hears this, she will say that the side of the room where I sit right now is the dining room. She sees the imaginary partition that separates the living room from the dining room. To me, it is the same big room, in which we hung seventeen paintings. Seventeen paintings, two years back. Just random colors splashed on paper, and Ammu insisted they were paintings. Modern art, Jaanu, what do you understand?

That wasn’t all we got.

Two bean bags – brownish grey and red. Two floor cushions – blue and green, and yellow and green. One rug in different shades of blue. A black flower vase. One basket full of potpourri with the fragrance of cinnamon. A violet bed sheet.

Colors that fill our life today, I wrote in my diary. Colors that make me want to live.

I lay behind the cane lampshade on the mattress, and Ammu splashed colors on pieces of paper.

Six down, three more to go, she said and dazzled again. Jaanu, just three more months.

I also want a wind chime, she added.

I want to peep out, beyond the blinds, and see if the leaves are swaying. I do not hear the wind chime right now. I removed the chime. It had to be removed. I didn’t ask Ammu. I did not need to. The wind was treacherous, and even on the nights when we wailed, the chime kept making noises. We had got used to the noises, but when the most important one had been taken away, we wanted them all to go.

Ammu wanted the noises to go. but she was scared of losing the light. She started pulling down the window blinds in the night.

I sit in front of the blinds, and my fingers twinge. I slice through the blinds, and travel deep inside, deep inside, into the darkness, far into the darkness.

Bring back the light.

_____________


Note: Wrote this as part of an exercise - the prompt was to write about a person looking at an object, and then how, either the person or the object undergoes a transformation. Partly copied from some of my old postings here.