The tiny man sits around the grown up, the brother, and the birds, teetering on the innocent emotions one expects of the seedling age. I couldn’t spot evidence of such tenderness after the first three years of his life.
An elder brother silences the innocent exploration and faux-pas moments. A constant policing of emotions and etiquette, refines the folly of the innocent mind. But I spotted the innocence when he held his tiny hand around the mother’s soft fleshy arm. The disappearing elbow offered a comfortable cushion for him to lean into. He leaned and kissed her arm. He plucks my biceps and tells tales of vein popping into muscles. The age of worshipping young heroes with no visible white hair has begun.
I worried that the tender conversation we have every few hours would disappear. The kisses on his mother’s arms had no regularity. The muscle memory was intact. He held her arm, but then a strange consciousness arose which reminded him – you are not supposed to express love so openly. Love is scarce. Or so it seem in the grown up world. I tested his innocence, and asked on his birthday, ‘What he wishes for, ’ and he said ‘money’. I asked, ‘after he gets all the money’ what he wants. He said, ‘more money’
Tiny man – you are too young to be in the no man’s land.
The flashy desires and chases of bundle never ends.
I remember the old man in that grave. I wanted to tell the tiny man about the old man’s happy moments. The moment when he bought us three overflowing suitcases of gifts. I still remember his smile, like a magician at the end of a trick, confident, eager, but mostly looking for the world to see him as who he really was.
Tiny man, I was you three decades ago, eager to show my friends, the talking watch, my printed photo on my school bag.
I see you dreaming my tiny man, smiling with the neatly arranged white set. We talk about them often.
Now the time has come for those two whites to part ways.
I could hear your cry of anger at the injustice of time; you screaming at the possible pain of the grown up manuver; the mother quoting stoic lines on enduring small pain.
They lie. It hurts.
Time demands action, tiny man.
No man has won this battle.
Time has come for the two to go.
Their is an eerie silence in the house. A moment one yearns to write that great novel.
I could hear the foot steps.
The doors opened.
The tiny man had ice creams. He slowly licked through the gaps of his front teeth.
The pearly whites had gone.
I miss those neatly arranged set.
I wondered at the ravages of the time when a tiny whistle of an unknown timbre overtook my ringing ears.
“Papa, I can whistle. “
He smiled widely showing the gums I hadn’t seen in 6 years.
“Papa, I can whistle.”
- 9th Dec 25