All the same obsessions domino their way back to occupy my mind again: Dreams, memories, humor, patterns and death. About a week ago my world was shaken. My cousin sister got into a terrible accident and is still unconscious. And while she lies there dreaming, carefully treading away from death, the rest of us hold on tight to memories, hope and humor.
Today I was going through old emails and found a mail my cousin sent me two years ago. She was excited because she had just found her diary from when she was in Holland. She was very very young – seven or eight. In her mail to me she transcribed one of the diary entries that caught her eye. The mail said:
Shonu monu! i was cleaning out some of the shelves at home today and I found this diary type of thing our teachers made us keep in class 3 when I was in Holland. Look what I wrote!
"On Sunday I remembered when we were in India on that night when we were going to Maastricht. I was very very scared because I didn't wanted to go to Maastricht, but I wanted to stay with Shonu. Afterwards I opened my colouring book and why do you think I cried, because I saw Shonu's colouring and, I did forget about Shonu, but then I remembered who Shonu was, and, I cried and cried, and then I lay in bed crying louder and louder. Afterwards I sent a letter to her on a piece of paper which had a cat on it because she loves cats she also has one her name is Shadow. Her name is Shadow because our shadow's always stay with us and Shonu wants her cat always to stay with her."
(oh and the funny thing is that the title of this so called story is- 'a happy happy weekend' hahaha)
What is strange is that on reading this I realized that I too had forgotten T and this mail brought back a flood of memories. Then I remembered who T was, and I cried and cried, and then I lay in bed crying louder and louder.
Funny how these things work. The first time I had read T’s mail two years ago, I had laughed at how cutely silly it was that she had ‘forgotten’ me so quickly as a kid.
But memories have a way of working in strange ways where often people, places and time get exchanged – and we get moments like this which is a memory within a memory within a memory.
