Once, in a dream, I chased a colour, beautiful, and softly hued. It cooled my fingers when I touched it, and then I woke, and it was gone. The years went by in ledgers, in numbers, in rooms far from the hills, and I forgot the dream had ever asked for anything but to be held. Then Tihar came, as it always does: lamps along the window ledges, marigolds strung like small suns, a rangoli blooming at the door. And you, my sister, with the plate in your hands, seven colours laid in careful lines, drew a rainbow on my forehead, and it was cool, as it was in the dream. This time I did not wake. A garland round my neck that would not fade, sweets pressed into my palm, a prayer for my long life spoken lightly, as if love were an ordinary thing. They say a sister's blessing once turned Death himself away from the door. I believe it. I have seen what a plate, a lamp and a steady hand can do. So let the cities turn to clones, let the old customs thin and fade. Whe...
Nobody tells you that fatherhood can begin years before the baby does. This is the story of how mine began. Some of it is funny, some of it is not, and I have tried to tell all of it honestly. The waiting I married around the third decade of my life, which already felt late. Four years on, there was still no child, and one thought followed me everywhere: I am not getting any younger. It was a strange kind of arithmetic. Every one of my birthdays added a year to one column, and every month left the other column empty. I did not say it aloud very often, but it was there at the back of every ordinary day. And relatives, as relatives do, asked: "So, when are you two becoming three, or more?" Most of it was meant kindly. Some of it was even asked with glee, some by those relatives who were childless themselves, which I always found interesting. It was also a question we were asking ourselves, far more often and far more quietly. My wife went through far more of it than I d...