The Homing Pigeons... Read Online Free Page B

were no adults invited, except my uncle and aunt. I wasn’t even sure if they had been invited or were in town by accident. They came to Chandigarh pretty often.
    “Radhika, don’t dirty your clothes. The guests will be coming soon,” my mother cried out from the bedroom. She was packing a bag. I was too young to understand if the packing of a bag meant anything but I listened to her. I stepped back from the muddy yard and sat on the small wooden stool in the courtyard of our house, waiting eagerly for the guests to arrive.
    I was still sitting on the stool when the children from the neighbourhood came. They were carrying boxes wrapped in brightly-coloured paper, you know, that shiny, cheap thing which shimmers in the light. I remembered when my brother had unwrapped one of those boxes to find a plastic helicopter. I almost wanted to tear the paper apart immediately but when my mother told me not to do it, I didn’t. I was still smarting from the spanking yesterday and so, I obeyed.
    We went inside to see a cheap cake that had a wafer thin icing. The baker had controlled his costs but created something that hovered between ugly and obnoxious. A plate held samosas that slouched, when they really should’ve been sitting. The crystallized syrup on the rasgullas told a nostalgic tale of grubbiness.
    It was a shame, but then, what more could you expect from a father who was a cab driver. He’d be up before four and leave for the Chandigarh railway station to pick up passengers arriving on the overnight train. It wasn’t short of a miracle that he was being able to provide for a family of five. Within his means, he could only afford a birthday party as extravagant. Even then, I had loved it.
    I loved it even more when the guests had left, leaving me alone to open the gifts. My brothers were scavengers, the vultures that hover over the lions to get a morsel of flesh. They waited for something that may not be worth my while, but were disappointed.
    In that small one bedroom house in the non-descript by- lanes of Chandigarh, it was nearly impossible to have guests. On the few occasions that we did, we would have to move the furniture to the courtyard. The folding cots were laid out in the drawing room where we would sleep. My uncle and aunt were given the bedroom while we slept on the cots, huddled up together like sardines in a can. It was a difficult fit for two adults and three children to sleep on the two folding cots but we were so used to it.
    I woke up to the sounds of my mother weeping. She never really cried. In all that was wrong in our lives, I never heard her cry. I didn’t even know why she was crying but I hugged her. She continued to weep while my aunt sat next to her, consoling her. She remained inconsolable.
    My father walked into the room. Suddenly and without warning, my mother’s bawling died. It was as if my mother had been programmed to stop crying the moment he entered. For a while, there was complete silence until my father broke it.
    “Have you spoken to her?” my father asked gruffly
    “Not yet,” my mother replied, barely able to get the words out of her parched throat.
    I thought it was the start of a vacation when my mother said through the tears that had been rolling down her cheeks, “Radhika, you’ll have to go with Uncle and Aunt. They will look after you.”
    It was a December morning when we made the journey in the back of a cranky public transport bus that refused to stop vibrating. Worse still, the windows wouldn’t stop the cold mountain air coming in. I was cold and huddled up closer to my aunt. She wasn’t doing very well in keeping me warm. The bus reluctantly covered the short distance that existed between my home and my uncle’s home. I was blissfully unaware that I would stay here longer than the vacation that I thought it was. Maybe, because of that morning, I have always detested the winters.

Aditya
    I wonder if Divya will order a steak for breakfast; she is such a