If you care to make sense of these drafts. Perhaps, I shall not bother with them, but still.
In the event of a deluge, the bags of sugar and rice would have to be stitched at the seams, and the big fat rats would have to be driven out from the kitchen with noise, and perhaps, brooms with long handles. We seem to have enough space for
-> The French perfumes.The tea cozy set.
-> Female buffalo corpses. The milk man’s supply of urea.
-> Textbooks used to barricade the entrances.
-> One hundred twenty two lipsticks, ranging from black to organdy. Sigh.
-> Harvested cultures of silverfish.
The piano grand stand, and the sheet music would have to be covered with wax, and the walls would be covered with a dense growth of mould.
->Of my love for the mold formations on the ceiling. And the rococo plaster of paris work done by a senile old artisan from the old city, whose grandfather had decorated the nawab’s palace in the days of plenty.
-> Of the djinns in the arborium, and the dark creature I saw lurking in the outhouse, whose presence would make the generator hum soft.
-> Of my neighbor’s daughters, who would creep up onto our terrace, and peep over my shoulder at the sketches I labored at, of the plumbing for a palace of many pleasures.
-> Of the weird colored patterns they would decorate the floor with, inspired by my meticulous designs, and the colors of the spring.
-> Of my old woman who would have to be left alone in her cubby hole on the top floor,.
-> Of her belongings would have to be set on fire,for they would set to rot and smell like dead animals. However, I shall leave her enough space for her evening calisthenics, and futile prayers.
->Febrile incantations would then resound amid the marble corridors, and the terracotta sculptures that father had retrieved from the ruins of Hampi and installed in the arborium.
-> The idols, the incense, the scepters of havans past and present, the old woman in her youth, a photo of hers, vying any beauty that ever lived, and the tales she told us, of monsters, and women, and children.
The gods shall have to be given ten square feet of the top floor, and father would have to be left to his means in his study, to suffocate himself with whatever it is he keeps smoking.
->Painted china dolls. The floating masses of decapitated Barbie dolls.
Father, always brooding.
Mother, always praying.
I shall tend to my potted plants, continue my patient experiments with the cello, and work on a map of the outer regions of a country I visited in my youth.
->And read John Evelyn’s diaries, to set my dreams to a curious color, and then photoshop myself, lucidly, into portions of his life.
The cousin who always visits in times of duress. And speaks of migrating to Africa or Canada.
->And looks like a curious modern day avatar of Dev Anand. And listens to 1950s Indian Jazz bands to fight stress.
-> Of my fantasies of drowning him in a pool of oil.
