Category: Children’s Section

I meet them in the bazaars, in the house of the store keeper, in the walls of the attic, in my history book, from my balcony, while going to school, at father’s new office, in the newspapers, in the temple fairs, in the looking glass, in letters and in the library. They are neighbourly like the trees of the square grounds that obstruct sun rays inclining them to the veranda of Mrs Bakhsh’s flat --- so that our clothesline misses the sunny wink and mother gets invective in early morning housekeeping. They can talk, laugh, sing, frown, gossip, sneer and think; I know some nine billion eight hundred fifty four of them, tomorrow there would be more, so I keep counting. I like to read them when in a hurry, they run like the frogs ---- ‘splotching’ on the rainy floors when Kalbaisakhi and wet showers hit office hours. They are concessions to recognition --- in this 'amnesian' world, where we keep looking for the specs, forgetting its use as a hair band atop the skull and that it keeps hairs in place better than wandering eyeballs. They are ill at ease with personalities, ears, nose, eyes, lips – they stick like cheese, though similar in the whole, their individuality is not amiss. Call them faces, if you please.