Fraility

We were parked in our noisy grey indigo sedan. “Mama is it the mice that squeaks?”  I asked sitting right behind, clinging to the driver’s seat. I Distractedly started peeking outside to a busy road on a Baisakhi evening, closing the window manually with a crank handle, after I had thrown the banana peel. My mother, on the passenger seat, wearing an orange salwar suit, a deep wine coloured lipstick settled in her cracked thin lips, a burgundy nail paint, half of it washed away into the sink, her hands would stay dipped in, all day. My dad wearing a spotless white kurta pajama, tanned to the darkest colour of harvested wheat, returns with a bag full of curiosities. He restarts the car and puts on a cassette by Harbhajan Mann. I started humming and moving left and right holding on to the top corners of dad’s seat. Mama turning her head towards her five years old, with her tired tight eyes, frowningly said, “No singing”. I, for a while, kept quiet. By the time the next song “Oye Hoye'' came on, I already forgot and started losing myself into it. My dad this time, with his firm expression, I did not see, in his tough voice said, “Did you not understand what no singing means?” I stopped at once, nervously letting go of the driver’s seat, scooping as back as I could. Subsequently, I start humming the next song “Lali'', but this time, in my brain only.