THE FINAL DIVORCE

It was early jan 2008,to be exact it might have been jan 26 or 25th,does it matter any more ? It was an eventful 13 days as 13 days for any person who has just lost his father ,not that he was a sentimental fool ,it was nothing about death that he was preoccupied with ,nor the end of a relationship ,a sort of hide and seek game with the old man ,whom he had started to understand a little bit ,so late in life.No it was not about him at all .Those 13 days taught him how the equation in the family is going to change once for all ,once the empire falls. The rumblings between the siblings had started a bit earlier ,no , not regarding the estate ,but on silly matters to begin to begin with ,but making the atmosphere deadly corrupt like the mosquitoes at large . The nausea permeated through the large old house like an unwelcome guest ,or was he that stranger ?. That house ,which was or appeared to be his home for a considerable part of his life ,blew up in smoke . He felt alone like a fool in the maddening crowd in kochi . kochi had abandoned him at last.
He walked through the palace road,past the vallayil pharmacy ,from where he used to fetch the oil for his brothers ears, the chavanaprasam for his mother,and the castor oil for the monthly purge of the whole family once a month as ordered by his father .The elayachan parambu where he had fun with his late friend moorthy ,seemed desolate and deserted. Thekkamadom ,the hub of his evenings with Kichan and Dharman teaching him the history of cricket, the arch rivalry of the english and aussies ,with violent arguments as to the exploits of Colin cowdrey,May,Edrich Gary sobers ,Kanhais, the Halls ,the Griffiths,the guile of Illingworth on a rainy day on English soil ,the legends of Simpson ,Benaud ,the fielding of Sheehan ,the Barringtons , the Redpaths ,Graveneys ,the Mackenzies and what not ,the tennis ball cricket ,the sandhya vandanom besides the temple pool ,the kili mass kali , the kittiyum kolum , the aim with the marbles ,the collecting of vadals ,a favourite art of those days ,spending endless hours in the temple premises in the dusks during the saastha preethy and ramanavami festival------ everything turning in to a blur ,end of an era ,a lost childhood .Ambling past the bank house where he used to steal flowers for the onam flower decorations ,he glanced at the left side where the naidu provision store is no more ,where his father used to take out the lime tasting mittayees for him from the glass bottles while the pattu varavu accounts was being settled by naidu. The neelamani stores is also history now .He passed through the vendors in front of haji eesa school onwards to gujarati school,not leaving behind the small dhaba on the left where during certain nights he enjoyed the hot small iddlies with steaming chutney with his friends.
As he slowly trudged back ,severing all the ties with his roots ,it was not severing ,but only blocking or denying the existence of the ugly ,enchanting but the everflowing Kochi. kochi that he loved and despised .Yes , he was losing another home as he had lost his father .HE HAD BECOME AN ADULT ATLAST.