Tuesday, September 20, 2005

ancestors

suddenly today morning i felt the urge to reach back into my past- beyond the time when i was born; in fact beyond the time even my parents were born. i want to know the secrets hidden within my skin color. the gene pool and the climate that gave me this particular shade of brown. what gives me these particular features? who else in the past or had them? from somewhere in the middle of todays’ maharasthtra where my mothers family comes from or from the rice fields of todays’ tamil nadu which is where my dad grew up. who were they to whom i owe these particular circumstances- this body, this language? the peasants, farmers, landlords, priests, workers? where were their homes? who did they love? what clothes did they wear?

suddenly today morning i needed to see them- really see them- not in the sepia tinted visions of movie flashbacks or in the costume drama of an amar chitra katha, but as living breathing people walking streets, making friends, eating food; i want to know their everyday life; not only their glories and tragedies but rather the glorious and tragic in the mundane.

as far back as possible, i need to draw me a family tree till the branches disappear into a haze.

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