A sacred space

For a time, life meant complete relaxation. Getting up late, making black tea and later lunch, listening to favourite songs (which prompted a question from a curious neighbour who thought it was a guy who played music), checking mails, replying to them and sitting to read on my favourite chair.

That chair was like a haven. The view was restricted with a wall, sometimes with a cat on it, the road you can see at a distance, the neighbour's houses (where at night, the sound of the lady scraping the last bit of food from the vessel for her husband could be heard in my room even with the windows closed) and a guava tree.

On days when I cleaned my room, after the work is done, I would sit and stare, first at my ultra-clean room with white floor (God, I miss my room, with the neatly arranged furniture, whose position I change during every cleaning session, though I am no blood relative of Tuglaq) and after a while at the scene outside. Once or twice I have seen the neighbour plucking the ripe fruits from the guava tree. Anyway, the ripe smell of its soft tasty flesh reached me all those times.

Once, on an idle day, I saw that this guava tree has a strange resemblance to a human form (with a well-shaped posterior) though upside down, with intertwined arms like an ancient supplicant praying incessantly to the gods. I even made a rough sketch of this sight. 

Now living with a husband who runs a chidiyakhana (he’s fond of pets and keeps two cages of budgies in the room) that drives me mad at times, I miss my room of single days- my neat sparkling room with a lot of space and with a good view.