Four Clover Life- By Namrata Shailendra Singh

                            Yes, that is what your son called me the day he lit your pyre- you’re an infidel. You stay and enjoy the United States. Try not to call. My stomach churned, and my thighs wobbled as I pulled strands of hair from the crown of my head,  pulled them so hard, it bled, and now a tiny bald patch is visible. The pandemic created travel rules I couldn’t break, a distance I couldn’t traverse, and circumstances so new to everyone around us, we stopped being people we knew. With your double mastectomy, you were the most vulnerable person to being spotted by the virus. The citadels erected around you proved permeable as the virus wormed and hoisted itself into your body. I was incapacitated, but your son stood right beside you; he did all he could, and so did your daughter-in-law, your husband, your brother, and even your sister-in-law. I was the only one missing because, years back, I chose to plant myself in a different country. But I tweeted and posted. I begged for

  Before I forget to tell you, I have decided not to participate in the Ganpati celebrations this year nor host Thanksgiving dinner. I need time to grieve. I thought we all needed it, or time to ponder, and reflect, and absorb what the pandemic made us experience. It was nothing short of a massacre last year. Everywhere you move, there are inescapable reminders that the pandemic is not yet over, and even if it was, it has scarred us in ways that would take years to heal, if not forget. Do we inspire so little emotion in each other as a community that we have ceased to care about loss? If it’s not mine, then have I lost anything? Society’s debauchery and superfluousness appal me. Our memories are short-lived. We get over too soon. We are desperate to celebrate; without the razzle-dazzle, is there anything to live, I wonder. The show must go on; the show must go with pizazz.  Since I cannot afford the panache, I will hermit myself close to you. The world will not stop by to notice my a

  My therapist feels uncomfortable about my obsessive-compulsive routine of cleaning . A month back, I survived a squeaky clean bathroom slip all because I wanted to get the last strand of cobweb out from the right-most corner of the ten feet high ceiling. My elbow suffered a hairline fracture, and I am currently on anti-inflammatory pills. It alleviates the pain; however, something in my heart continues to ache. I have found a home remedy for it- ripe mango with soaked flattened rice- aam chura - just the way you fed me from an old steel bowl for morning breakfast during summer vacation at granny’s place in the village. The first morsel is enough to palliate the suffering; however, it’s when I peel the whole mango and bite into it with juices trickling down my fingers to arms and dripping off the elbows, forming small mango juice puddle on the kitchen floor, that I finally see you. Once I even licked you off from the vinyl floor. You tasted sweet- mango sweet. Later, the demon in my h