A MOTHER'S WAIT: AN UNDYING BELIEF

She was old. Very old. Her elbow joints and ankle massaged with oil from crushed eucalyptus seeds, shone in the morning sun.

She reclined in the cane chair with a grunt and stretched her legs. Two thin, fair fingers of her's allowed the dense bun at the back of her head to unfold. It dropped open to its full length. Thin, white strands of hair then came to rest against the brown canes of the chair. She pushed back at the bridge of her spectacles and tried to focus. Her wrinkle rimmed eyes slowly narrowed upon the two long aluminium needles working to weave the neckline of a small, pink cardigan. Every time she pulled at the strand of the wool, the ball rolled at her feet and yet another stitch was added to the neckline. Her hands tirelessly worked with the needles, as the bangles kept clinking.

"Nice design aunty" I appreciated.

"For my daughter..." She smiled but her eyes still held narrowed at the tips of the working needles.

"But isn't it too small?" I queried sportingly. Considering her age, her daughter must be too old to fit into an infant's size. 

A silence followed as my eyes traced down her old arms.

"Don't you know that all reincarnations happen from the infant stage..." she paused and looking away at a distance, mumbled, "...she will come...she will definitely come"

I followed her gaze and found a little girl, in a pink cardigan, chasing a butterfly amid hedges of white daisies.

I left the place without a word and looking up, tried to hold back the tears from leaping over the banks of eyes. The clinking of her bangles and the sound of working needles gradually fading in my ears.

Sobhan Pramanik

A GRACIOUS MISTAKE

I thought SHE was the blob of SILVER PAINT that I had MISTAKENLY dropped from the brush of my emotions onto the canvas of my life, to spoil a beautiful painting. I regarded her as a mistake because even after my loving her to the core, she didn't acknowledge my love. She went her way, leaving me broken.

But today when a visitor picked up that painting and commented, I realized how precious my mistake was. 

The visitor said, "The moon is amazing and its sheen, serene as ever. You paint amazing moonlit nights" He said so, overlooking the beautifully drawn village and the wavy reflection of the moon on the pond. 

I smiled as he took away the painting, leaving me with a wad of notes.

~Even an unrequited love, beyond the realms of your realization, is a blissful act in itself in itself.

-Sobhan Pramanik-

ANOTHER YEAR

"Another year went by." She remarked looking over her shoulders at our house, standing silent and away from the shore in the dark, amid an hemisphere of barren trees.

I followed her gaze. A tide of cool, crisp wind from the ocean swept across my face. It smelt of salt and the damp grits of sand riding the wind.

The house from the distance, surrounded by the night's calm, looked both desolate and beautiful. Pale light of the moon danced to a slippery gentleness on 

the walls and window panes. It was dark within, except the electric bulb within a lampshade she had made for the new year's eve from coconut shells and colored beads, 

hanging from the veranda roof, coating the place in a soft, affectionate glow.