Portraits

Grow old with me, the best is yet to be …

Happy Birthday, Abbygail!

The Rest is Memory

Dad “He’s dead?” said Princess. […] “Who told you that?” said Grandad. “We keep that name moving in the Overhead,” he said, and it seemed to Princess that the wind in the shutter arrays above her blew more forlornly […] His name is in the code, in the wind, in the rigging, and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ...

For the past twenty years, you’ve been the bane of my existence. I slept with the phone by the bedside, never knowing when Mummy would call, and one of us would have to come find you, and dig you out of the newest hole you dug for yourself. And none of those years have been harder, than the one where we were estranged for the past year. Two decades of picking up after you had taken their toll. ...

I lost my Mai today. Until my mid 30s, I rued the gulf that stood between Mai and me. While my parents insistence on teaching us English, as our primary language has benefited me immensely, in most everything I do, the one thing that I feel sad about is that I speak my mother tongue (Konkani) in a slow halting manner. 1 Which meant that I never could talk well with my grandmother. I am one of her oldest grandchildren, and I never got to have heart to heart conversations with her, the way my other cousins did. And yet … ...