Subin’s ancestral house in Mallapuram

8 Feb, at the threshold of the house, sometime in the early hours of morning

As I write this, sitting on the steps at the threshold of Subin's ancestral house in Mallapuram, life has already come alive here. Tempos, rickshaws, trucks and mopeds screeching across every couple of seconds on the bypass road just in front of our house. I am told, this road did not exist when Subin and his cousins were children and came to Mallapuram on all their summer holidays, invariably.I am on my last day of my visit here, probably even the last hour as we will now quickly pull out our ceremonial outfits, bathe and leave this place in a cab.I'd heard way too many anecdotes from this place from Subin. He loves to reminisce about the past and had taken me through many a story of how he and his cousins would pluck mangoes from the trees and eat them ripe and fresh and how this place had trees till as far as you could see - bananas, pineapples, berries ( eatable and sweet , that I dont know names of), and tamarind and jack fruit and crotons and bougenvillas and the list continues. As I write, I can imagine Vallechan in his eighties, walking around the mangroves talking to the plants , touching their leaves as he walks.Ammama briefly stood looking out of the window yesterday. From her failing memory , plucking scenes of from many many years ago. A regret on her brows on what remains of what had been.The red flooring, now chipping in many places- the wooden roof , solid and yet frayed at places reeks of memories from years gone by. Just too many things here keep taking me to the past and dont allow me to live in today - The huge trees that have now dried up, the small rooms with that lovely musty smell of a life that was locked up in its rooms for years tilll we opened it. The kitchen with the chulha where we stoked fire just to take pictures of a practice we wanted to capture knowing well we will never cook rice that way.As I sit here writing, calm and at ease with myself -i feel the desperation to capture every bit of this past .. this desperation to not let it drift further than what it already has.