The unconditional one.

 My earliest memories of her are her rough hands, dark fingers with untidily chopped nails. Strangely her palms were white. The lines on her palms were so deep that they formed deep crevices into the white skin.

 She sang while the roughness of her hands caressed my forehead and put me to sleep.

 Most of her memories in my head are sepia toned and exist in a faded time. A time, I don’t think about anymore. Sometimes it feels like there was another me who lived then, almost like a Technicolor movie that has faded and has scratched, torn posters adorning walls of a foregone era.

She never asked. She never demanded. I fail to understand now how she always just gave.

I don’t talk to her often and these days I don’t have much to tell her too. She used to be my confidant though; she knew when I gave up on life, when at the age of eight I fell in love for the first time. When my heart broke and when I cried. She knew what would make me smile. She knew it was the crystallized jello that made me happy. It still does. It’s not crystallized anymore and it maybe that’s why it doesn’t taste the same.

At times I wonder why she did all this? Why she bathed and cleaned me. Why she listened to me when I screamed at her. In return all she did was fondly cuddle me into a big bear hug.

She gave me more love than she did to her own children. She spent more time with me. She wiped my tears with her dirty saree that smelt of onions but that was somehow comforting.

Sometimes I hear her when I’m alone, I hear her call me fondly like she always did.

Sometimes I wonder why I ever grew up. That’s when I really miss her.