Sunlit memories of another age

There are no sounds. The yellow silk embroidered curtains lift themselves, flutter, pause, then gently blow themselves up like sails. A patch of sunlight falls onto a brocaded pink wedding saree lying torn on the bed. A small boy in a white T is swaying from the window grills. He looks strangely like me.
With both my feet on the sill, I lean back stretching my arms. Ma looks distraught. She is saying something. Her lips move, she point towards a long bamboo lying on the bed. She bends down and picks the radio off the ground. The glass display is shattered web cracked, a haunting Bengali song plays, as Ma turns the radio in her hands it changes by itself to news.
The cupboard door hangs from the lower hinges. Ma picks me off the window and deposits me on the bed. She looks beautiful. She picks up the phone and hand cranks it to the Army exchange.
Ma is crying, I think.
There is a war on. Dad is never around in the mornings. Yesterday we had spent 3 hours in the trench. Ma said I behaved well. She told me about Didu who during the last war would sit and eat mud and Tony would play practical pranks on the neighbours by making the siren sound with a steel tumbler pressed to his face.
The MP’s arrive in a few minutes. They are tall.

(c) Arjun Chandramohan Bali. 2004.