Departures

I keep thinking.
What’s wrong with us?

I keep telling myself not to give much thought about it.
There’s people all around. I stand stranded in middle of nothingness.
My self has stopped reflecting. I take them all in. People. Time, Things and everything else. Succumbed to the womb of a black inkpot, I stand stranded.
Or is there anything around?

I keep looking.
At myself. In the mirrors and everywhere else.

I try to see where came from. I stare at myself, as the dark corridors of my house and those creaky wooden stairs build around me. I realise I am standing at one of the bulky windows of Vadakkeyara. Looking out to see if I could still see those sights. The rain. The neelanmaavu and beyond. Far off, near the veli, the souls laid to rest keep talking, about the crack in the walls. They say it’s all covered up but they can hear the sounds. The neelanmaavu broods over in front of me, waiting for its turn and watching us. I close my eyes, only to realize they were never open.

I keep trying to talk.
To the forgotten. To the omnipresent.

My mind is still beside the placid green water in the well and the ezhuthachanprani in it. Nothing moves. Everything is still and afloat. Everything. The do’s, never done, and the don’ts, repeated. Memories and dreams pretending to ignore the dead faces around. Thoughts and actions.
Suddenly,something fell on all of us with a big sound. A huge branch. On top, the kilichundan sways as if it has shed the weight of its lifetime. The ezhuthachanprani and everything else dissolves tracelessly and disappears.

I keep walking.
Past the well.

Past the moovandan that never grew to bear fruits. Past everything to the vadekkethodi, there, across the kalluvettiyakuzhi, I see her lying. “Just an afternoon nap”, says the vazha placed on top of her. “Out of habit, nothing else”. She’ll get up soon. Just in time for her tea and after that she’ll have a little bit of time to see what sukumaran is up to, before molu comes. “Had it been the older times, when you used to listen” says vazha hesitantly,“ she’d have had time to talk also, about what she had seen and heard”. I look at her, ignoring vazha’s insignificant conversation. I try telling her I need to go. She’s deep asleep. The mole on her stomach resemble the inert ezhuthachanprani. The stomach moves up and down slowly, in regular but late intervals. “The lesser you breathe, the longer you’ll live” says vazha. I get up.

I keep counting.
The number of maavus. Maybe they are counting us too. I look down the well. The ezhuthachanprani is still there. It is eating the leaves of the fallen branch. I pick a stone, covered with its own share of moss, waiting to rest under the bed of memories.

I lie back and start the television. And everything comes back at me again. The dos and the don’ts, the faces and the limbs, memories and dreams. But now, they’re all moving. They surround me. I close my eyes and the noise sinks the voice of the mapla shouting outside, asking in his voice coated with the dust of tobacco, “maavu kodukkando?”

I keep thinking.
What’s wrong with us?
I keep telling myself not to give much thought about it.