starburst

I have a photo frame right beside my laptop on my desk. The frame is translucent blue with a starburst of silver glitter and stars around where the photo should go. Of course, right now, it wouldn't look that great coz of all the dust but that's because I got it right before coming to university... which was three, yes, three years back.

It was given to me by mum's friend as a going away and good luck present. It came with loads of yummy lebanese desserts but the frame is what I really appreciated. I knew exactly what photograph would go in it, one of my sister and myself at our house on the day of my going-away party. That photo was there for an entire two years. Only then did I discover one with both my parents in it on what was their pseudo-honeymoon.

They are both lying down in a hammock somewhere in either Kashmir or Ooty and my mum looks shy. She has this peculiar upside-down smile which looks beautifully naughty. It was a time when she was free of all burdens in life with a man she was slowly beginning to love. My dad, a man I am afraid and regret I never knew is sitting beside her not looking particularly happy or sad but with a blank look of shock as if he doesn't know why or who is taking the photograph.

I wish I knew what was going through his mind. We can never know what another is thinking but we all pretend to because we've known them long enough to understand how they think, and what that facial-twitch or frown or smile means. We've got mental signposts based on years of experience. But I never had it. Don't get me wrong here, I don't miss him, I don't feel any particular love for him but I would have liked to know how a father would have changed my life. I want to miss him and I want to love him over and above that self-imposed obligatory love one must have for family members but it's just not possible. I just think it's unfair that so many people knew him and his own son never did. It's so ironic or surreal or whatever word that can be used in this kind of situation.

So there the photoframe sits, with its simple, natural, naïve photograph meticulously pasted in it. I take no notice of it at all most of the time but it sits there patient and bursting with love. A growing, young love for each other, for their respective families, for gulab-jamun, for goat brain, for paneer tikka, for the child that is growing inside my ma and all the love they showered on me when I was born.

I'm so lucky and I don't even fucking know it.