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Kingfisher, her father explained,
trying to make sense of Sheru’s
descriptions. She, in her short little life,
Sheru repeated, trying to say the word in a tone
to convey her own sense of it. She repeated it several times while tottering towards her room, not entirely satisfied, and felt a twinge, a curious yearning toward it, imperceptible to passersby, her father, the
house or the trees.
In those days the old house used to be big and busy. Uncles and Aunts, Grand-Uncle and Grand-Aunts. Eid lunches. Christmas dinners. Great-Grandparents to kiss hello and goodbye to. Loud large gatherings—Sheru could only distinguish the adults from the different pleats of their trousers. They stood in groups, discussing things of inconceivable import, glasses clinking. Then a familiar voice proceeded by a familiar face would appear in front of her eyes and lift her to the surface of conversation where Sheru would stare intently at faces around her, unaware of the words buzzing past but rather noticing the cadence and expression with which they were spoken.
In spite of the allure of warm, buzzing, yellow lit grown-up rooms Sheru knew the place she belonged was outside, amongst her comrades. The daughters of the cook, the sons of the mali and the twins of the chowkidar—together they were the Jungli gang—a rough and rapt little bunch, who charged around the family gardens. Together they invented their own games, cartwheeling and somersaulting in the grass for hours on end. Years of her life went by like this and then everything transitioned at once, without pain. One by one her friends began to move away and studies took precedence over play. Nobody really told her why, it was just one of those things that couldn't be challenged. Have you ever questioned why a clock ticks, or interrogated a leaf for falling to the ground?
Within a year she was tucked inside, away from the sun and the sky, in a world of air-conditioning. With nothing better to do in the long suspended summer afternoons, she spent her time in front of schoolbooks and computers before dinner. Her mother wanted her to read and gave her a box set of C. S. Lewis.
with a kiss. But they never
did. They were awake, of course.
There was always that strip of
light under their door, and the awful sounds of nighttime murmuring. Sheru would walk back down the corridor and a sudden peak would break out from her parents room, a single syllable, half a word, as sharp as broken glass.
And Sheru would get back into bed and try very hard not to think of anything at all.
When she was very young, Sheherezade would sneak out of the house and into far corners of the back garden. Past the wide trimmed lawn, beyond the painted brick borders and between dark tree trunks—her very own private jungle. Nooks between shrubs and corners behind fallen branches. The image of the house shifting behind layers of leaves. Sometimes she would pause her romps just to watch the facade of the house smile and frown as clouds passed over the sun. The entrance fell outwards: a peeling awning for cars to roll through followed by a few marble steps that ended at the door. Right there, on the final step, one Sunday afternoon, there was perched a singular miracle. A delicate neck rose from a plump of blue and yellow plumage,
What happened, in other words, in the world of adults, in the heads of very reasonable people, in their bodies loaded with knowledge?​
A year later, after a particularly bad argument, a secret flight ticket was booked and the old house lost another resident. Now, it was just Sheherezade and her father.​
Her childhood was over.
To Begin With A Kingfisher
Leila Alam
​
Looking back, Sheru
realised how poorly
divided her attention was.
Caught up in the whirlwind of
childhood, she never looked around to realise that her time with the people around her was finite. First came The Great Wipeout, followed by The Great Exodus. The leagues of the departed went as follows: First her Dadi died, and then her Grand-Aunt, her Grandfather, her Great Grandfather, two cousins and yet another Aunt. Along with them, the exodus: Cousin Vicky, Cousin Micky, Pinkie, Chini and Jaanu all left for university and never returned. In the end, a house built for twenty remained home for only Sheru and her parents. It is a strange feeling, living in a house in its twilight days.
Sunday afternoons were the quietest. It was as though everyone had forgotten how to speak. Sheru’s parents had loved her, so there was really no reason to complain, they had told her that they loved her every evening as long as she could remember. Plus, they were wonderful fascinating people too. Mother: bookseller extraordinaire; Father: respected environmentalist. But then there were those sour moments in the car, during dinner, on the porch—
​
a sudden unexplained unhappiness, tarnishing everything.
Mother-Father-Daughter! An unbreakable unit! Nothing would go wrong.
Sometimes, her parents would sit in their room and Talk. Only the edges and corners of their voices reached Sheherezade. And Sheru would be petrified because the sourness had come and sat on the house again. In the dark, she felt a weight crushing
her stomach, and she would often get up in
the middle of the night to vomit. She made
noise on purpose: sharp feelings in her
chest and her head hurt her. She hoped her parents would help, clean her face and take her back to bed
​