P.S. “What life begets, one must suffer.”
I hear your voice in my ear, as though you are next to me at this moment. Even as the city beneath me groans and stretches itself flat under the horrendous assault of the summer sun, alleyways and roads cramped into a haphazard mess emanating the daily thrum of city life; hawkers and cars clustered at a red light, yellow school buses and yellower rickshaws, stalls selling street food, fancy ware and oxidised jewellery, and other things my senses can’t quite grasp fully, all I can think about is that one time you told me the heat of my youth would condemn me to suffer.
The brilliant summer sun wiping away the tops of trees in your backyard, you and I sitting with our knees touching, mangoes drifting in a cool water bath between us. School was out for the summer, I was little.
“You are the child of my child”, your voice was low, rid of its usual tenacity, “so I feel it necessary to warn you that young girls grow with a natural heat and hunger for things they think they should have.”
The fruit knife deposited a slice of mango in my waiting palm, and I licked away at the sweet juice dribbling down my fingers, only vaguely understanding your words. I wonder now — would I have been taken aback and offended had I been a bit older then?
Never mind, I understand and have suffered enough now.
“Do you know why we soak these mangoes in water for half an hour before eating them?” I don’t know if I prompted you further. “It’s done to take away the heat from within the fruit. It can harm the body if you happen to eat too many mangoes at once. The heat builds and builds and builds until poof!” You blew your cheeks and I laughed. I must have.
“So eat well. And grow well. Don’t go out looking for things you cannot have, or the heat will consume you.” By then I didn’t know whether you were still talking to me, or if the glazed look in your eyes was the result of inner workings or staring up at the sun for too long.
The canopy of trees thinned over the summer, baring the yard to a cruel heat. We never sat there again.
I’m sorry, I want to say to you. All that you’d experienced made you give me that warning. I truly understand it now. The urgency, the need, and the heat. I will burn now, in this land where we cannot want for more than what we have.
But that is perhaps my fate. And I have grown to learn that it is in my nature to burn.
I will visit you soon. In the retirement home by the Ganga. I hope the water helps cool the land so that this season might be more pleasant and bearable for you.
Until then.
A. Hasach
A. Hasach (@a_hasach) is an eighteen-year-old writer from India, soon pursuing an undergraduate degree in English. Her work has appeared in Pressfuls Digipress, Inertia Teen, and other publications.