Saturday, November 27, 2004
inspiration is a funny, eccentric old bird with feathers that grow in the maddest colours.sitting in shanni khala's dining room, chewing the abck of my pen and staring outside her big picture window- i love those windows; they don't have grilles on them and slide open like a real window should- i was thinking of something suitable to put inside the book i was giving nana. evenings are interesting twilights; white light that lingers in the sky like a camera flash frozen until rose and gold begin to seep through.
my nana is a remarkable man, this is something i have known since i was seven years old. but just how special struck me with such force, that day when i was thinking of something that could condense all the love and respect that i associate with my grandfather, something that would put into so many words all the things i will never forget. i think i owe a lot of whatever creativity i have to nana- he was forever thinking up new adventures for sana and i when we were living with him and nani. you'd think the average grandpa would be pretty boring, but nana? never. he was the one who made hidey-holes with us underneath the dining table, making sure the heater was on so we'd be snuggly, and stocked with colouring books so we wouldn't be bored. he was the one who did nursery rhymes with different voices, and invented funny versions of his own with me. he was the one who created 'the three jews came from jerusalem'- the first time amma sung it for us, i couldn't stop laughing. i almost fell off our double bed :) nana used to take us to rahat bakery every fourteenth of august for vanilla ice-cream cones, the swirly ones out of the machine that we technically weren't supposed to have because they were too germ-infested for amma's approval, which made them even better :D an off-white datsun 120Y, he still drives it. how many men do you know who did things like that for you? nana, who quotes me keats and wordsworth and guards my book with a possessiveness that does me proud. he's so rare, and precious....i wish i could keep him forever. he is the reason i have faith, still. if there is him, there will be others too, in their own way. there must be.
Mina at 1:31 AM
