Daily Prompt: Faded

Some dreams wake me up and leave me in a haze.

I remember seeing the dirty unreachable corners, between the bed and the bookshelf, between the TV stand and that chest of drawers. I remember the old red curtains, faded from continuous direct exposure to the sun, hanging from every one of the abundant windows and doorways. I remember the old paint peeling off the ancient walls.

The TV plays a cliche cinema about a rich girl falling in love with a poor guy. It’s always the same, with slightly different plot points every time. Everyone in the room knows all the actors and actresses and acts as if it were their story. There’s in-scene commentary. There’re sing-alongs every time a song comes up. They can’t count how many times they’ve watched each of these.

IBMC #2: Freeze a Foto Challenge

This picture is of a rose in bloom on my grandmother’s gardened terrace from 4-5 years ago. It doesn’t really represent the entire place because I remember a cousin saying that if he ever had heaven, he would wish for that terrace. Nanu had all sorts of trees up there; from mangos and lemons to chillis and medicinal. She had everything. The house was a two storey one that my Nana had built way back, before the ’71 liberation war, and had to face an ongoing lawsuit to keep his. After he died in 2012, it just wasn’t the same. To this day, my brother is angry at my uncles for allowing the house to be demolished in favour of the more modern apartment complexes. It was the only place he could call home, he said. When Nanu had to live over at my aunt’s because of her pregnancy, the terrace-top garden suffered from lack of care and died off. But the memories remain.

IBMC #02: Freeze a Foto Challenge

Smile. Because It Happened.

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
― Dr. Seuss

Both her feet used to fit on a single gray tile. The ceilings looked imposing and felt untouchable. The chairs were too big for her small frame, and the tables felt too high for comfort. Sometimes agoraphobia kicked in when she was alone in the rooms. The lights sometimes hurt her eyes. The sheer number of stairs on the way to the roof made her legs ache every time she climbed them to get lunch.