'All That Love' by Sravanthi Challapalli

There are so many photos of you, albums and albums of them, forty in all! Right until the time you celebrated your 30th wedding anniversary, long after people had stopped printing the pictures and limited them to their mobile phones! I can almost hear Dad singing Ol’ McDonald in his own way to get you to laugh and pose: “Here a click, there a click, everywhere a click click!” Of course he would! You were the firstborn, the first grandchild, you even had to be the first of just two girls in a brood of male grandchildren, didn’t you? “Girls lend beauty and grace, though they are ours to keep only for a short time!” grandmother would pronounce, sniffling at the thought that daughters were a loan to be returned and repaid rightfully to their marital homes …

Hah! Trust you to find a husband willing to live in yours! There’s his silly face, all proud and smiling, sitting in one of those awful throne-like red faux leather chairs so typical of wedding receptions in the Nineties, and you in your fair skin, with your sheets of glossy black hair, in your mauve silk sari — of course you wouldn’t wear pink or red, you had to be different, and your grin so bright like the place didn’t need any electricity! Yes, it’s all there!

Everyone – everything – loved you: The termites left your photos alone and attacked mine! Why wouldn’t they? Mine were still in paper packets, while yours had been categorized by year and occasion and preserved in impenetrable plastic boxes! There aren’t even that many photos of me!

I know your explanations: “Our parents were older by the time you came along 13 years later; But there are several photos of you too, you’re actually counting? They gave you so much … All the toys you wanted, the dolls, the gadgets, the expensive education, the car (which you wrecked), this house, the husband you wanted, who wanted a very big dowry …” 

Yes, yes, I know but those are all … just … bits of brick, metal, things which could be bought for a price! What I wanted was the smile that bloomed on Dad’s face when you came for the holidays, Mom’s happiness when your sunny presence pierced the black cloud I seemed to carry around me —I wanted them to feel that way about me! When the blind ingrate you are now accuses them of doing more for me, I could have burnt your photos and revelled in the sight of them curling up and crumbling but I chose not to ... In each picture, a few pricks with a needle, under your ear, on your cheek, in your eye, in your heart, concealed to the world but visible to me, I content myself with that!