On Impossibilities.

It’s either LKG or UKG. I can’t tell the two years apart in my barrel of fragmented memories. Ironed-white shirts and muleta-red skirts; the autorickshaw driver lifts us up and gently drives us into the spaces in between the blue seat’s torn edges and the ashy knees that are already in front of them as if we are fluid lego pieces. Brown arms with half a dozen holy threads and the scent of Cuticura layered over that of the sambars and rasams in metal tiffins that dangle from one hand while the other balances water bottles hanging around feeble necks- the driver must be good at tetris. When the auto reaches the school gates, a miss in a cotton sari runs up to our side. Dots of sweat decorate the arm that reaches out to grab me. At Assembly, as we claim all those around us – those we intend to steal chocolate from, copy off of, gossip about, play with and intentionally not play with, unintentionally forget about, learn from and about, grow up with and leave behind – as brothers and sisters, simply by virtue of the label on our application-pending passports, I feel the sweat on my forehead running down the sides of my face. Water and sodium, urea and fear; the little fingers on my non-pledging left hand restlessly pound my thigh. Today, I might have to read it aloud. The fear manifests in tears that, for now, are not marked by mascara streaks.

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