Saturday 18 August 2012

A Revisit

The rose garden had vanished, the wicker gate lost to time. There were no snapdragons by the side of the driveway. The tall bamboo trees next to the gate had turned into baskets. Where was the lush green hedge and the greener than green garden, the fruit trees?

An older woman looked at the young girl child playing on the lush lawn as the sprinkler watered the grass.They stared at each other for a moment,the child turned,calling her brother and his friends to join her play,running away into the lawn at the back as the woman watched them. She looked at the house again, her home for a few years, the better part of her childhood, now running into the lawn away from her. The structure itself had changed, nothing of the original home was left, the garage was in the same place but not much else. Through the open gate she saw the desolate garden, without the border of colorful flowers or the trees which bore luscious mangoes, plums and peaches. The grape vine behind the kitchen which her mother had lovingly nurtured with the gardener's help must have long gone.

The unkempt garden and the silent walls of the house smiled slightly at the grey hair and wrinkled skin, akin in their destiny. Their childhood left behind, their youth striding into a mature adulthood slowing down to the almost placid middle age where the grey and the patchy grass merged.

She glanced back, the child came running out followed by two bounding cats. The child stopped short and they looked at each other for for a long moment, the child at her future, the woman her past.