The crow beaked its way into the pomegranate, dipping its head into its torn heart, grabbing a few seeds every now and then, scuttling and spanning its wings, not wanting to share its loot with the few other swarming nearby. Doris looked out her large window at the crow and thought it a crook-ish kind of a bird. It was morning and the light spread like butter on the toast Doris had just popped from her toaster. Delite, the black font on her red and silver stainless steel toaster screamed, even that had more going on in its life, she thought rubbing away the last cobwebs of sleep in her eyes. She started after her morning chores, dusting the white plastic tablecloth in her dining room, atop which stood a glass vase with yesterdays flowers, a bunch of red roses that had taken on a bit of soot from the night. She lingered for a moment, pretending to be a ceramic figurine holding flowers in a basket which no one wanted because, ofcourse, they were made of clay. Suddenly, hurriedly, she reached out for a plump orange from the bowl of fruits in front of her, rearranging the remaining fruits carefully in the bronze plate, a new still life, recomposed, with nothing amiss. Well, almost nothing, she thought as she peeled away the orange and put a piece in her mouth. Just like the red-faced snow monkeys up in the mountains in Japan, who in the dead of winters, when snow fell in copious blizzards,eating twigs and dried leaves because fruits were not to be found, did to conserve their energy - nothing. She presumed that if she put her ears to the wall, she would be able to hear the secrets of her old, ancestral house, she was certain they were hiding in the crevices in the bricks, that was surely what was curdling the milk in the pan a few hours too early and making the old dog chase its tail at a certain hour that wasnt on the clock, night after night. Walls that had seen her mother wailing like a bird that could sense a forthcoming cyclone when she had lost Doriss twin sister at birth, walls that were wallpapered with a flock of butterflies, now yellowing and peeling off in places. Walls that had heard her grandfather scream in anguish as he died thinking that shadows were swallowing his 85-year old body, her grandfather who had been an unusual man, a believer in the supernatural, a self-proclaimed water witch, a dowser, who had, in fact, divined water wells in as many as three spots in the surrounding areas. In an early evening hour, as he was making his way back home after having spotted one such water well, he had noticed the street palmist letting his prized pet parrot out of its cage. The parrot had two rings of red lines around its throat, lines that went around smoothly in its otherwise saturated green coat, lines that looked like a child had drawn in his drawing book to decorate his bird. The parrot, hobbling over a deck of cards, had picked out a card that had predicted that Doriss grandfather would have a painter for a grandchild. Doris often idled that she was really her dead twin, and that her life was a series of paintings, one of which was unfinished. One in which she sat out in the open, fairy like, near a river which had water the colour of cobalt blue. A row of fishes gleamed in it like slivers of mercury and a fox paddling a rickety boat carried a little child away to the distant horizon. The crow had long flown, leaving behind the skin of the pomegranate like a ravaged roadside shoe. In the morning that was now growing into a wizened old afternoon, Doris, too, could probably hear the few notes that seemed to be hanging above the old piano standing in the corner of the room, thought Gregor, her lone pet turtle, as it withdrew into its shell for a few days to come.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 14:02:02 +0000
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