Living Room

Our evenings have withdrawn into a closed living room, where we don’t chat but let a large TV cheat us. We watch life on a screen with a vicarious thrill. There were children everywhere in our ancestral home – you could see one even within a bamboo basket lying upside down. ‘One’ is the ideal number now. No one likes noises annoying the living room. We’ve banished our only daughter into an adjacent study – where she’s seen as a broiler chicken. A savory smell, wafting up from the kitchen, used to tickle my nostrils, while sitting on the veranda. Now our cooker rarely whistles – fast-food parcels really silence our kitchen. Our pa and ma had defeated the hard soil – it was their sweat drops that soothed our stomachs. We’ve discarded the defunct parents in a dark stinking room, even where they pray for us. We peep into others’ life with a voyeur’s eyes. Love and fun hatch not out of our muted words. We aren’t living here, only imagining of living.