Storytelling

My baby eats a tiny bolus of rice at a time. She opens her mouth. An ‘O’ or an ‘AA,’ for me to place the rice on her soft round tongue, which looks like a slice of ham. I place the bolus, flavoured with a smidgeon of ghee and salt in the centre. She closes her mouth along with her eyes. When she opens them again, I put on my reading glasses, and lean towards her. Her baby breath tickles my nose. I begin to read.

I read slowly, rice grain by rice grain. She opens her mouth and her eyes, wide. As wide as her small muscles will allow. Then she closes them again. A morsel disappears down her throat. Another waits to take its place. It is a slow story process. The rice in the bowl starts to dry around the edges. Her four-teeth mouth starts to hold the food longer and longer. The sun sinks. But rice has endless stories to tell. Time learns to be patient.

Oh yes, time learns to be patient. Tries to at the least, but does not always succeed.

* * *

This morning, on my way to the kitchen to fetch a bowl for my rice loving baby, I stubbed the big toe of my right foot. Something, translucent-white, grainy, and hard got embedded in the nail bed of my toe. It hurt and looked like a blister ready to burst. My baby’s wail receded into the background while the pain in my toe screamed. Stumbling like a blind woman, I upturned things in my dressing cabinet. Finally, I located my trusty tweezers. I pulled out the offending thing. I peered into the miniscule hole in my toe. The pain left me immediately. The relief I felt was almost euphoric. And then, I started to bleed.

I bled and bled. All over the floor. Blood red letters kept coming together and drawing apart again. The floor filled up. I climbed on to my bed, with my right foot dangling, and my baby on my hip. The floor grew thick and slushy with letters and then words. Which in turn became sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books. A river of stories lapped at my bed. The current grew strong, and soon enough the stories lifted my bed. I began to sail. My baby sailed with me, gurgling with delight. I leaned over to read better, for her sake. My big toe kept dripping all the while.

My big toe kept on dripping. Finally, the blood-warm stories poured into the street and flowed all the way to the library.

* * *

The one person I love most after my baby is the librarian. But the sight of that river lapping at the library’s walls, made her distraught.

It made her so distraught that she lit a fire to send out smoke signals, but no one heeded her SOS.

The stories rose, carrying away the books on currents that kept getting stronger and stronger. The librarian leapt out of the window. She caught the tail end of a jet contrail. Dangling by a wisp of chalky white in the sky, she cried out to me.

“The words in the books have turned into blood and smoke. The books are meaningless shells now,” she said. And then, she turned into a dot like a distant locust cloud.

* * *

When we found her again (and my baby was still fixed to my hip), she was entwined among seaweeds. In the language of divers she mimed, “The books have leaked into the oceans. The shelves are empty in the library.” And then she swam away.

“What are we to do now?” I asked after her petulantly.

I rolled a tiny bolus of rice between my fingers and shoved it in, even though my baby refused to open her mouth. She loved the librarian too, who had swum away from us. Become unreachable, except for her voice. Which was a relief.

“Unbind yourselves!” I heard her roar from the deep. “The stories are endless and everywhere.”

I did as she had bid. Rice bolus in hand and baby on my hip, I pinched out from the air, earth, water, and fire. I fed my baby. Her hunger kept growing, but I found enough at hand to keep her satiated. An unrestricted supply in fact. And the best part is, I became free. I could go anywhere. And I did, wherever the stories led me.