Red

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Your red umbrella never escaped my razor sharp vision. I used to stand, fingers clutching window grille like clinging kiwi vines. On those wet evenings, my pointless competition with the platform samosawala used to end when our one-room apartment started brimming with the aroma of freshly cooked tomato fish curry and yellow lentils. You used to say that we don't just live close to the station, we live "with" it. The station, a monster, mostly loud, sometimes brooding, courting its incessant stream of smoke-bellowing mistresses. You used to return cradled in the crowded womb of one such paramour and landed straight into the arms of your flesh-and-blood wife. With your arrival, all culinary aromas would bow down to the familiar smell of you.
Today, sixty-seven days after your death, as I stand in the exact same spot, straining my eyes for red, ignoring the pelting rain, I realize how hope can be so blissful and how nostalgia can be so unnerving.

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