Nanda's

That was a time when we did not have a television in our house and the only household that had a television set in the neighborhood was Nanda’s, I spent almost all of my Sunday evenings there. The next best part was his mom; she always had something to give me whenever I was at their home and I had this privilege to walk in to their kitchen anytime. I was crazy for the ice cold water from their refrigerator something else my house wasn’t to see for a while.

When I left to study from a boarding school, my visits to their house started to dwindle and almost stopped when we could afford a television, a telephone and of course a refrigerator.

This one time when I went home after almost 7 months, I for some reason wanted to go to Nanda's house. The drawing room of their house was not the same, the TV had changed and the sofa was different. Nanda’s mother made me sit on the sofa, it was new and uncomfortable because I always sat on the floor to watch TV and as always she got me my favorite glass of cold water.

Nanda's mother is a sweet woman, she was asking all sorts of questions that friends who had lost touch would, I was eager answering her because I was in a new place, living a new life and I liked boasting about it. In all the while, I couldn’t help noticing a couple of plaited coconut leaves strung vertically up to the ceiling in the room, the other side of which was a moving figure.

Nanda's mother soon left to the kitchen to make me some coffee and I was alone with only the figure behind the leaves and of course the television. I walked over to find Nanda’s cousin Tara busy knitting something. I knew her of course from our child hood days, especially this one time when I climbed up a chimney in front of her for 'god knows what' and was mashed up by my elder brother for 'god knows what'.

I asked her what she was doing and she sheepishly said knitting. I asked her what a coconut leaf was doing in the middle of a house and she only twisted her lips as if to say 'I don’t know'. All my other questions to strike a conversation only evoked single words and body language from her, like I was a stranger.

Nanda's mother was there now holding a steaming cup of coffee, and I should have known she was a little flustered. I came back to the sofa and now Nanda's mother took to single words, for a while I even thought she wanted me to leave and I left very soon unable to apprehend the situation and without finishing the coffee.

I told my mother and my brother's wife of what had happened when I walked home and before I finished they burst out laughing. It was a whole ten minutes before they stopped to laugh and tell me that it was a custom all new women followed for a few days. Tara was not supposed to talk to me, not to any man for that matter.

I did not understand much at that time, but at least that was the last time I ever went to Nanda's house.