Bits of life

F-5 Words-200

marbles and shooting stones with the cattle bar. The most important pleasure was the prospect of spending time spent with Uncle John, our friend, guide and benefactor.
He managed the parental property of paddy fields, mango groves and sugar cane farms.
Things went on smoothly like an uninterrupted flow of a mountain stream till that summer when my grandfather, uncle John’s father, died in his sleep at a ripe old age of eighty six. We attended the funeral and at the gathering after the rites I remember his friends and relatives talking incessantly of my grandpa’s sunny nature and kindness. The dead man’s memories hung like a thick web of smoke on everyone on that somber evening of a particularly depressing day in July. Within a few days my grandma breathed her last and thus we had double funerals in the same month. People talked of the love and proximity the couple shared during their lives and curiously, it seemed to extend even into their afterlife.

I distinctly recall the smile and cheer that never left uncle John despite the heavy load of responsibilities that he inherited, as the eldest son of his father. Agriculture was not an easy livelihood,