April Chronicles..

April is my most cruel month.Its hot and ungracious. Its unrelenting and hopeless. It also is too long for my liking.

April Memories

Once when I was younger Mom Dad took me to visit Kang Farm in Sasaiyan where TT Uncle had married and settled with his Australian wife 'April'. Theirs was one of those plush mechanised farms in the Terrai. It was so exotic really. They had  Grey Hounds and German Shephards running around without leashes on the farm. The lovely garden which flowered even in April and offcourse those star shaped cookies they served with Tea. It was all too much for the poor little small town  me. But what I most of all I remeber is April, the first blond  relative I had acquired. I must have been 6 years old then. She was so tall and so pretty.So much prettier than my dusky old familiar mom . The registeration of her presence in my memory is like a shock of white heat. A bright patch with lot of light and excitemnet but no details.


Years later one got to know that Uncle had got divorced and April had left him, leaving behind a daughter with white skin and black eyes called May. May wore pink flannel frocks and spoke cute english and was so much prettier and adorable that the natty 12 year old me. By now the farm had 3 Great Danes and a Pomerarian and 5 hens running around . The garden was unkempt and Uncle TT had setlled abroad leaving little May behind in the care of her very feeble and old grandparents who did not understand her language. I was always afraid that the huge dogs would eat May.


The farmhouse slowly lost its charm for me except that one memory of Aunt April that has stayed all these years. For me Aunt April would always remain that enigma I had found walking on Uncle's farm.  That tall strikingly beautiful woman who blasted everone with her sizzling chemistry even when she just walked beside much shorter Uncle TT. Her orange lipstick, her sparkling blue eyes and her loud manly laughter. In burning April afternoons I often remember her peeping through the net of the wooden door calling  Uncle TT to come in for Tea. She was so beautiful and hardy that I dont belive that the house ever divorced her memories although Uncle TT found another australian wife who never visited the farm in India.(for good reason I am sure!)
In the naked heat of April the sharp colours of memory too turn cruel and I remember Aunt April. She gave Kang family that eternal space in my memory with her shadows passing through the thick April sunlight. Strong colourful and cruel. Not to be kept but only remebered.