on forgetting

and remembering

meow my mango blossoms

have we had our first and many more mangoes of the season?

i wish for you to be blessed by an abundance of yellow-goodness.

Nowhere Home is a labor of love, a home built on and through and for stories. I would love to knock at your inbox with posts, playlists, and pyaar.

i wrote this essay last year in the company of a zoom-room-full of beautiful writers, and have ever since toyed with the want to share it here.

here, read (hold) a piece of my heart, will you?

I am forgetful.

I could tell you how I learned to forget, but I don’t remember much about it. Or I could tell you about all the ways I outsource the labor of remembering.

I can list the little helpers that hold my memories for me – stories, movies, square-box images on Instagram, saved posts, bookmarked tabs, playlists, leaves, petals, tidbits I find left behind or over or out, starred conversations, screenshots, folders intended to be meticulously sorted waiting for the intention to meet motivation, phrases mostly spelled wrong hastily typed into notes app, photos on my wall, posters, letters, emails, bus tickets, boarding passes, metro card, notebook after notebook of words, oh and all the to-do lists and the to-do lists that lists all the to-do lists that need to be do-ed.

Or I could tell you how much I forget. Coming across the concept of object impermanence burst a lot of laddus in my head — a true eureka moment. I would’ve run out naked, screaming, if I were into running or screaming. I can lean into the nudity. But. Forget morality, have you wondered if Archimedes would have run out of his bath if he had to haul a pair of boobs dangling off his chest, bumping into each other and repelled to either side and back and forth running their own bumpy-slumpy race while he tried to run?

I digress. If not for the magic of having the typed-out words staring back at me from the screen, I would definitely not have remembered where I was going with this paragraph.

Instead of pulling an Archimedes, I sighed a deep sigh and cried a bit, as one does when one finds the perfect words to describe something that you felt deeply all your life but also felt deeply ashamed for feeling.

o b j e c t i m p e r m e n a n c e

Years later, the ADHD genre of memes introduced me to simpler words - out of sight, out of mind. Does that explain my need to obsessively anoint little helpers to be my lighthouse to bring me home to myself?

Today, I want to tell you about the treasure I keep tucked under my phone cover. Treasure that reveals itself only to the eyes that linger on, or when the lighting is just right.

Four petals of gulmohar, from four flowers, from four different trees.

One from Bangalore, which I picked while on a walk with V and S.

I picked a flower, gave a petal each to both of them, kept one for myself. I left the remaining two next to a small bunch of pink bougainvillea that sat on a momo cart where it looked like it belonged. We shared a smile – momo chetan and I, freezing the moment in the steam rising from the pot.

Let me walk back a little.

Before I picked up the flower, I removed the cover to take out a petal that sat there. The one that A. had given to me a morning I was leaving for Thironthoram to visit my family. A little something to see me through the trauma-injection (phrase credit: sambit, my sasur) that every visit turns out to be.

Despite the return tickets that are booked before the ticket to Kerala. Despite all the hope and therapy and anti-depressants and want, dread begins to flutter out of me the moment the tickets are booked. Continues to do so throughout the way, all the while I am there, till I am back home.

I kept turning to that petal- traces its body over and over. To remind myself of a home I can go back to.

I left the petal under the gulmohar tree that day on my walk with my friends in Bangalore before I picked up a flower. That day I knew for sure, we were over— the petal and me, A. and I.

In Hyderabad, in an apartment I share with two friends, I live in a room whose windows open to a gulmohar tree. My roommate, I call it. I introduce it to everyone as my lover. As lovers often do, the tree sends me love and petals with the breeze. They dance their way to me, and I pick each one and press it in the books that surround me. Except for the one I keep close – pressed to the back of my phone.

To hold on to the preciousness of belonging.

Many months later, when I am trying to push my luggage into the narrow space between car seats, a gulmohar petal traipse onto the backseat. There is no one to say goodbye to. No one to hold the door open. I want to cry but there is little time.

I pick up the petal from the seat, hold it. Throughout the cab ride to the airport. Throughout my way to to my parents’ place. Like the prayer beads that ammumma kept under her pillow, I will it to protect me.

Every time I step into the house, I feel time fuse into a puddle of nightmares, sleeplessness, exhaustion, and throbbing headaches. A fever dream interrupted by the fractions of time spent with Kannanchetan – my brother. Of warmth, of loud ways of loving, being silly-gooses together, giggling endlessly for no reason, a lot of singing, rocking, speaking in meows.

I don't remember exactly where I picked up the last petal - it could have been from any of the trees I gawked at during my two weeks spent there. I keep it with me to remind me of Kannanchetan’s red t-shirt, softened by sun and wear and Surf, washed down from a CPI-M flag red to a pastel-candle red. It reminds me how whole I feel when we hug, it stays with me to keep me afloat until the next time I get to tickle him into a fit of laughter.

The four petals travel with me. Remind me to not forget.

Last month I moved them. The petals now stay inside my notebook, together. The tree at my place fell to death last week. I am not in Hyderabad, and when I am back, there will be no gulmohar outside my window. Grief yearns for a witness, and here I am.

And here, an old playlist for you.

thanks for reading, really.