A Tribute Ungiven

It felt weird to be going to the places which were so familiar so many years ago are eerily new now. Then, the roads I walked upon were just red laterite so typical of the topography. The red soil that would wash away with each rain to reveal the massive boulders beneath.
They are today transformed into tarred two-lane wonders.
The destinations that were nothing but unknown blips on district maps have now become well-connected hubs of multiple activities. It doesn't need as much planning or time or even stopovers as it used to.
The adventure that was our annual summer trip is just routine now.

Yet, the loss in my constant shadow. When I laugh, I remember the times she laughed with me. When I stumble, I remember the times she gripped me so that I won't fall in those missteps. When I have unshed tears collecting at the corners of my eyes, I remember the tears that she had about coming back to the dirt of her origin. The same place where she was born. The same place where I was born but never formed the connection that was so completely and so personally hers.

These are the same fields through which she walked holding my hand, telling me stories: family legends that were true and false, both. These are the same people with whom she had blood ties that go beyond generations of families. Just older, not so much wise.

But today, they seem like strangers stuck in a Utopian milieu, where she was always loved. always wanted, always ... there.

She isn't there today.

Why  was I there? Did I want to meet her in her cadence, or did I want to see her in the place where she always wanted to be but couldn't?

Her house, the garishly yellow house, that gave it its name, is long gone. Just like her. There aren't even ruins left to say that the Yellow House stood there. The fields no longer have the forget-me-nots that she picked out for me, neither is the jasmine bush that she so loved.

But the people that were her family are still there. They still think of her. They still talk of her. I can't. Not without getting that lump that forms and then gets stuck somewhere in the throat.

I took the same route that she took while meeting her uncles and aunts. Her cousins. The children of her cousins. I wanted her to see that I am, finally, becoming something similar to her. And, then just days later, I had to say goodbye to her... To the place that she called home, long ago. To the people she called her own.

And then, to her.

They take into consideration the time and alignment of the stars and whatnot to decide this is the day she would come back to see us. And we welcome her in the typical ritualistic manner. We invoke her into a paper mache female figure that is smaller than my pinkie finger. We welcome her with flowers and rice and sesame and onto a simple leaf.

Then we leave, looking back at that leaf. And I think of her. The way she was just a year ago. The way she was a decade ago. The way she was three decades ago. I keep that one image — when she was just 16 — live in my head, my heart. She was beautiful. She was someone I could have been friends with. She was someone I would never see again.

Then came today when I woke up not remembering the significance of the day. Only to be reminded of that one day 365 days ago by well-meaning motherly figures. Only to be reminded that she was not there.

But she was. Following me with her eyes throughout the room from where we put her. Looking at me, not moving, but still right behind me. I try to smell her in the clothes she left behind; in the knicknacks she kept hoarding. I try to feel her through the dent in the mattress she slept on; in the house she built. I think I found her.

Ensconced in the place where she had already made some space even before she planned on leaving.

Ma. Amma. Ammu.