The human mind is the most amazing phenomenon on earth. It is a perforated sieve where the past, the present and the future vie with each other to secure a more prominent position. And I, who have been accidentally in this marvelous category too,own a perforated sieve. Let me say before I forget, that the quality of this perforated sieve varies with each individual of the human category. Sadly, my sieve seems to be of very poor quality regarding its capacity to percolate the past. In my dull mill, the past has more prominence than the present and the future. Time is a very shrewd companion. He intoxicates me with his sweetness and when I become blind to reality, he stealthily steals away. But when I grope frantically for those precious moments I lost, he walks away with an ironical smile.
I remember him, the old man with dark rimmed spectacles, the old black slippers with their familiar 'tap', 'tap' sounds, the firm look in his sharp eyes as he sat by me teaching me the alphabets.
"A, repeat!" he used to coax, adjusting his spectacles on his sharp nose. I would say "ouch!grandpa!" when I felt his warm fingers twist my little ears.
We sat here, yes, under this mango tree. He would sit on the huge wooden chair and I, on a little stool with the "alphabet book" between us. To me, learning those twenty six letters was the most agonizing process. I was skilled in pretending to be tragically sick, every time I saw him approaching me with that, much hated "alphabet book."
I had darkened the reputation of my brilliant family by taking exactly six months and twenty five days to learn the twenty six alphabets. I remember my mother watching her father with utmost admiration and me with miserable pity, while I sat beside the old man, hating him each time he coaxed me with his low, rasping voice to learn the alphabets.
A,B,C,D...yes I hated them, I despised those 26 meaningless, letters just as much as I disliked that senseless nursery teacher of mine, who had developed an unfathomable hatred towards me at the very sight of my'A' in my handwriting notebook.
i remember the day, when the old man breathed his last. i remember the six year old girl who despite the loss of her front teeth, had the broadest smile at the funeral.
Now, I often console myself by terming my barbaric behavior at the funeral as part of 'innocence'.
Today I write with my limited range of skill, I often stop in mid-sentence and think of my grandpa. then placing my pen on the old dusty table I attempt to repeat the alphabets,'A.B.C.D...' and almost every time fail miserably to follow their fixed order.
I am a fifteen year old girl with a faint reputation of having a flair for writing. only i know, the desperate ways I still employ to learn those dreadful 26 letters.
And now sitting beneath the same old mango tree with familiar yet obscure feelings of loneliness, i wipe away the warm tears before they fall upon the dusty 'alphabet book.'
The irony of time! The past is dead, the present alive and the future unborn. How I despise those words and the amount of endurance I possess towards those perverted beings who quote this often to me. It is beyond all description. Time is a traitor!
No, I don't go the extent of making the degrading confession that I don't know the 26 letters. I mean I still am not certain whether 'J' comes before'K' or is it the other way round. I fervently pray that I succeed in learning those 26 letters before I leave school. It's my firm belief that with this achievement I can compensate for that barbaric, toothless smile i displayed at the old man's funeral. And tell me, what would be more agonizing than a grandma who has the cheek to place the snapshot of her granddaughter's toothless smile in a silver frame, right beside that haunting'alphabet book' on my dusty old study table.
Anusha
14 years
Published in "Scintilla"
