Ami........Part 1

It had been one year since I have started to lock my bedroom. Every two weeks I visited it, as if it sheltered some relic, cleaned it, washed all stingy clothes and the attached bathroom that became home to a couple of lizards and spiders.

As I opened the lock of my bedroom, that old smell of dust came back. This I called “the carbon dioxide smell” to describe that it is difficult to breathe. But now it is not. I have become dangerously attached to it. Memories flew back into me as I stepped into my old bedroom whitewashed years ago and cleaned weeks ago. The spiders have found their shelter in most corners of the room. My so called study table was messed up with nursery rhyme books and baby powder tins. I remembered that I never bothered to clean it up since that dark Friday evening. I have left it there. They have survived. Just like me.

I let the windows go open. Light came inside with such excitement that resembled the pilgrims who waited for the temple doors to open. Suddenly my room smelled and looked different. For the first time in twelve months I smiled looking at my room. It was here I spent my childhood between books. It was here that I saw dreams. It was here that slept laughing slept crying. It was here that I made “make-ups”, long speeches, self-explanations for whatever I messed up each day. It was here I acted smart, acted wise. It was here that I hid myself. It was here I knew myself. It was here that I became daughter, student, mother. It was here I made myself.

Though I slept here and it was in all sense “my room”, actually it gave me no pleasure. It was a dark room with small windows with translucent blue glass. But as the years passed I felt more affinity towards it. I started loving that place. You know, you get separated from something after a very long time, good or bad, you would have a tendency to get back to it. I explained it with the case of addiction to smoking. In my case too, it was something like that.

You have spent your early years in a place; it is natural that you get attached to it. But here there was an additional reason. Behind this locked door I had left much of my frustrations...

In the locked cupboard of my locked room, I had left some relics of a cute fairy who visited me last year. I had brought my baby “Ami” home, despite all soured faces around me. My parents revolted, shouted. But it did not stop their daughter from bringing them an adopted grandchild. Ami soon made her way into our hearts. We started accepting her as ours, only ours. For the first time in last ten years of my life, someone other than me slept in my bed. Ami had gained her right to sleep with her mother. Every night I told her stories. I pulled her towards me. She clinked on to me reminding me of my early school days. I remembered my mother’s heat, how her love radiated, and the kitchen smell of onions and garlic...