The painting hangs in the centre of the wall, above the television set. She always gets lost when she looks at it, whenever she visits her daughter’s house. Lost in the acres of green fields that go on forever and the dirt path that snakes its way through them. The trees lining the path remind her of the men in her village in India, how they would pick holay from the fields and sit under the trees, roasting them over a small fire. She used to watch them on the days when she was allowed to accompany her grandfather as he went to survey the fields. The memory of her grandfather, the crinkly feel of his beard, the loping way he walked, makes her smile. She thinks it impossible that he has been dead for decades. How can it be, when her memories of him are as sharp as something that happened yesterday? She sometimes feels like she has been asleep for sixty years, like most of her life has just swept past her.
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Nudrat Kamal 