Tamarind

Laced fingers – practically indistinguishable genetically yet separate thanks to 44 years that distanced us.

Fair. Spotted. Translucent. Strange I thought. Mine didn’t look so shimmery in the light. She was special from the start. Little did I know that was also a sign of her battle where swords were drawn against an undefeatable opponent - time.

We’d sit for hours on the balcony, cordoned off from the rickety railway tracks watching life as it was lived on the outskirts of our secure bubble. That was the beauty of 75 International Buddhist Center Road. The only house on the road painstakingly build from ground up by hands fueled with tamil blood – hands that were widely considered honorary Sinhalese ones. I loved leaning back on her cushiony bosom and listening to her whisper the stories that birthed me. From nothing to everything, her hands would gently caress mine and I learned from life about the caliber of humanity. Enough to pen unbirthed novels, she’d say. Unbirthed, still.

Hours would pass, with us sitting in papaya seeds scattered like freckles on crisp clean marble. Freckles like tamarind seeds precariously placed on steaming coconut rice. It was her moment to shine. In me, she left her essence – imprinted in words. We shared so much, more than most would imagine – the 9 year old me and the 53 year old her – somehow of one spirit. Harlequins, dreams, Enid Blyton, poetry, sunset wishes, steaming puttu slick with butter and crystallized sugar, jam consumed in secrecy – she was the consummate best friend before I realized I had another. Through welded iron and glass windows, we would patiently wait for the sunset – all the while making wishes that she full well believed would come true.

“ke sera sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see, ke sera sera.”

The lilt of her song has followed me through countries, languages, moments of discovery, self-awareness, rebellion – they never left my side. In reflections, I see it as the invisible person in the room. A shadow that casts itself and shatters the common perception of me. It defines my roots and in turn the person I’ve become. In some ways, it is my soundtrack.

There’s no need to worry about me. The pain, it seems to have fallen away – it’s not as sharp or as tart as the first taste of tamarind on unfamiliar lips. It molded me, became a part of my rhetoric – so much so that I don’t realize she’s gone until I’m reminded by her two ungrateful spawns that its time for a ‘show’.

Many many years ago, I thought I saw that familiar spirit in my newborn cousin. But I was wrong because I quickly realized – you cannot embody the essence of someone if you were never touched by her life. Now, I pity them. They never ever knew the real her – sure she was their mom but never their friend. The her that had dreams of Japanese flowers (that’s how amma got them – osmosis perhaps), wanted to travel sans drama, wanted a parivar that was connected in truity not pretense….she wanted so much out of life and most of it – just never came true. And that, is something none of them will ever know about her. I guess that’s why we try so hard to be friends with our amma, that’s why we’re insanely close because we (her grandkids) saw how the lack of those things – erased her.

This Saturday – tomorrow – the tamil calendar marks her 20th death anniversary and in a big cold house in the middle of nowhere, her life will be remembered by those that never remembered her when there was life to still live. And for the first time in many many many years of proactively deciding to wrench myself and my parivar away from the pretense – a reunion of sorts is in the works. I’ll be there in person – doing what needs to be done as the first grandchild in the family. And as the first –I will smile while holding down the tartness of this experience somewhere deep within.

And behind every smile will be the silent reminder: we may have forgiven the actions of the past but never will we forget.

Ke sera, sera.