Daydreaming.......

A lazy Thursday afternoon, I am in between two stages of my experiment and have about an hour to kill. The lab seemed unusually quiet for a week day. Then I suddenly remembered that there was a guest visiting from Georgia Tech and he was giving a talk today; all the Chinese people were there because the flyer said "refreshments will be served"! No wonder the labs were deserted. I wondered whether I could sneak in and grab a brownie or two but then decided against it. I fumbled in my backpack and found an orange. I remembered Priya put it in today morning saying that I buy stuff and stack it away in the refrigerator and forget about it until it is fit for 'scientific study'!

So I took the orange and went over to the lunch room. Two of its walls were made entirely of glass and through it I could see that it must be more than a hundred degrees outside. It was almost sixty inside and I blew into my hands to make them warm. The strong scent of the orange drifted to my nostrils as I began peeling it.....

"Come quickly" said my grandmother "I have peeled the oranges and sprinkled salt on them and if you don’t want it I will give it to the birds to eat."
She sat in a sunny corner on the terrace on a rug she had woven when her eyesight hadn’t failed her. The huge leaves of the coconut tree swished about in the wintry wind and displaced a very indignant parrot which then walked over cautiously near amma eyeing the orange.
"But I am not hungry amma" I wailed “Mom made me eat bread in the morning"
"Aren’t you ten years old now?" she reasoned “So doesn’t that mean that you have to eat more? Or else how will you ever grow?"
Reluctantly I walked over to the other end of the terrace where she was sitting. The parrot looked at me rather skeptically and decided that the mischievous glint in my eye could not be trusted and trotted over to perch on the coconut leaf.
"I will eat only if you tell me stories of what you used to do in Almora when you were a little girl" I bargained.
"Which one do you want to hear?” she asked as she fondly pulled me onto her lap.
"The one when your father went hunting and killed a tiger" I knew them all by heart.
She began telling me about the British officer who visited Almora and how he and her father went, on an elephant, to kill the tiger that had already been injured a few days back.
"He gave me this after he returned" she pulled out, from the folds of her soft white cotton sari, a tiger's nail which she had made into a necklace and wore around her neck. "You will get it when you are older" I looked at it through my half closed eyes and tried hard to stay awake but the sun was so mellow and her lap was so secure and the lullaby of the coconut leaves was so sweet that I drifted off into slumber land.....

"Kya haal hai?"

I looked around startled. I was surprised to find myself in the lunch room in the Biodesign on a cold steel chair, a half-peeled orange in my hand and Shervin staring at me."Ex... excuse me" was all I could manage to stammer.
"Hey, I just spoke to you in Hindi!" he seemed pretty excited about it." Jas taught me to say 'how are you' in Hindi"

"Yes....you did....yeah....very....umm....very nice! Good job" I was still feeling lost.

The mind is a strange thing. It takes you down those dusty memory lanes which you thought you had forgotten long ago and clears away the cobwebs to fill you heart with the strange pangs known as nostalgia. The whispers never fail to reach you......those voices from the past. And then they go away again, like the clearing of an enchanted mist, and leave you stranded on your isolated island, wondering why you couldnt be there forever.