WHEN THE LUCKY RED SEED TELL 

STORIES. 

(Malayalam: 

Manjadikuru Kadha Parayumbol.)

How long has it been? Five years or more? Even the roads have changed, and I have got taller and tanned. Yet, the turning to an infamous junction didn’t change. It has always been a sight to see the green of the tree spread above the road giving a shade. Only the trickiest of the rays made their way through and to the windshield. On the way, I saw the house where I spent most of my vacation in, fighting with cousins, playing with whatever that could be found and being the hero of the house.
The wings of the hero was sometimes held down for good by an old man who was the head of the house. His sound still hung around in the air. Only his throne was empty. The children were running around, handing the card telling his departure. The youngest one clung onto his father, pulling his hair and taking money out of his pocket. Most of the faces were unfamiliar, though their welcoming smiles were persisting.
The ones with the receding hairline stood in one corner, whereas the ones with white strands of hair sat on a side. The children’s voice grew louder. As I sat with my mother, my other half and some other relatives, the time started to slow down.
“Imagine what Kochachan would do if he was here,” my mother’s cousin duly noted.
“He would probably yell at them and ask them to go inside,” my mother said with a laugh, remembering the old times. Turning to us, she began. “What you see here is nothing. When we were young, everyone would come here during the vacation. There were like twenty of us, running around making noise, sitting by the lake and throwing stones and commenting everyone as they went on. We were famous back then. Whenever he saw us sitting by the lake, he would run to us and yell, ‘Get back home you little pests!’ That voice itself scared us, though we would sneak back after some time. And grandpa used to drink his tea in a huge cup. We twenty would stand in a row, waiting to see who he would pick to give the leftover tea. Then at night, we all slept on a huge blanket, making noises to scare the ones that were afraid of the ghosts.”
“But the most memorable time where when grandpa died,” he added. “I still remember the sight of him being carried to the house. We all were young back then and most of us had no idea. Everyone else were laughing, while we ran around picking the lucky red seeds and playing with clay. We would fight to give drinks to the guests, though we always snuck a cup or two and had it for ourselves. Now all there is just these four little ones,” he said, pointing at his nephews.
All I could remember was the time when a grandfather of mine passed away in Cochin. There were six or seven of us children, and we ran around in that house, having no idea of what was going on. But none of us sat by the lake or ran around making such big mess and sound. Compared to them, we were professional ninjas.
Thinking about the long lost childhood, I leaned back on the chair, thinking about the time in Cochin. Stories went on about uncle’s experience in dealing with the prisoners, for he worked in the Jail department.
Time filed by soon enough. The needle of the clock chased to time, not knowing it was its controller. One became two, and two became three.
“Shouldn’t we be going now?” I asked, noticing the weight on my eyelids. One of my teacher always used to say with her sweetest voice, “Are swings being built on your eye-lids, for they are weighing down?”
On the way out, standing by the field, I noticed the lucky red seeds scattered around. Picking them up, I knew they too had some stories to tell. Wrapping them up in a tissue paper, I forced it down on my pocket, so that I could decode whatever they had to tell. Waving good bye to everyone, I waited for a day to come back, to get to know more stories about the forgotten childhood and the lucky red seeds.