Annapoorni bent forward and hugged her knees. She turned her face and smiled at her son. Both of them watched indulgently as her daughter in law Brenda ran after her children, 4 year old Anna and 2 year old Dev. ‘You like them, Amma?’ he asked, with a yearning look in his eyes. ‘They are wonderful, Kanna,’ she said and ruffled his hair like she used to do when he was a kid. ‘I love them,’ she said gently… ‘and so would Appa. Just give him time.’ They both lapsed into silence, each lost in memories…
‘Daddeeee!’ Dev came hurtling towards them. ‘ Help! Anna’s after me! She’ll catch me!’ Before Kannan could respond, Annapoorni drew the panting child to her and said, ‘No…she won’t.’ ‘Yes, she will…she wants to beat me.’ ‘Really? said Annapoorni. ‘You go and tell her if she doesn’t behave, Snoogums – boogum will catch her.’
‘Whatums boogum?’ asked Dev. His grandma rolled her big eyes and whispered…
‘ Snooooooogumssss….boooooogummm’… Dev, half scared and half tickled at the thought of some monster catching his sister, ran back to her.
‘Amma! You remember!’ exclaimed Kannan with astonishment writ large on his face that she still remembered the word he had used to scare everyone in his childhood. The Snoogums Boogum was the ogre specially created for him by his dad on one of those never ending story sessions they used to have when Kannan was four years old! She just smiled. Why tell him that she remembered everything about him from the day he was born to that fateful day when he had quarrelled with his father and left home not ever to return? He would not understand the pain they had gone through… Maybe he will, now that he is a father himself, she thought and immediately chided herself. God forbid! Let him not go through what we have.
She stared at the darkening sky. She could see the evening star twinkling down at her… Back home it will be dawn, she reflected. Deva would have made his coffee and he would be leaning against the railings on the balcony, looking at the morning star and taking lazy sips at his coffee… That was something they both used to enjoy doing together… ‘This morning star is our ‘arundati’. Let us watch it every dawn, together,’ he had told her the morning after their wedding. They had….. for 52 years. ‘Wonder if he misses me,’ She mused. After 52 years of togetherness, it was for the first time that they were separated like this. When Kannan had called them and begged their forgiveness, the mother in her just could not resist flying out to him. Dev senior had been stubborn. ‘You go,’ he had said. ‘I’ll be fine here.’ The evening star and the morning star, both were the same…. The Venus… Both the worlds were hers now…..
Sensing her nostalgia, Kannan hugged her and said quietly, ‘I’m happy you forgave me, Amma,’ and as his eyes misted with emotion, he quickly got up and ran towards Brenda and children. Annapoorni sighed, wiping a few stray tears away from the corner of her eyes.
‘ East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet!’ People who oft quoted these words in her society were so biased, she thought. In the past one week, she had seen just how well East and West had met and this perfect juxtaposition deserved all her and her husband’s blessings… She decided to call Dev senior as soon as she reached home and bridge a five year old gap between the father and the son. She owed it to these wonderful people. She watched as Kannan swung Anna onto his shoulders, her long thin legs dangling over him, and Brenda scooped a tired, tousled Dev up into her arms……
She recalled Robert Browning’s lines from Pippa Passes, the lines she had learnt by heart in her youth. She murmured them now to herself:
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn,
God’s in his Heaven-
All’s right with the world!
P.S. Nafs, Impossible is nothing……Nothing is impossible! I swear!
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