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Who was Amma? What was her life made up of? Did anyone really know?
Even today as she lay one last time in the house she had entered as a child bride some 70 years ago, Amma smelled of the kebabs she had served her family last night.
Like in life, in death too Amma had no smell of her own. In all these long years the spices mixed with the dust and grime of life had dissolved and settled into the layers of her flesh.
Her bones had birthed; and her womb had nurtured. They too were strangers now, they no longer smelled of her blood.
Amma’s husband had a itr shop in a street across the masjid. ‘Sahab’, as she lovingly called him, brought her jasmines and roses bottled up in colourful bottles. But even those smells were given to her. Sahab died in his youth and the borrowed smells also faded away gradually.
Amma’s life smelled of rituals. Rituals, carefully ironed at night and laid out impeccably throughout the day.So when she died as quietly as she had lived, she left behind no smell, even the ashes of her dreams didn’t reek of her wounds.
They found a box near her bed the next day. It had neatly folded papers of all sizes, some had yellowed. They were all pictures of rivers – free, falling, flowing, breaking boundaries when happy and drying out when sad.
Pictures cut out from newspapers, magazines, school drawings. All the rivers in each picture were blue, the same blue as her eyes.
First published at author’s blog
A collector of stories, I am a freelance event curator with an experience in liasioning, content development and ideation for heritage & culture themed immersive events. I have featured in a documentary produced by the read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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