Chair and terrace

I grew up in house with a solitary chair. It was the one in the room of my second maternal uncle - the one who made living by fixing radios back then. In spite of suffering a few falls in my hand, for years it served as a seat for my third uncle's friends -especially the one with the first and only motorcycle in our neighborhood then- during his once a month openly secret drinking parties while us children were safely kept away. I remember the chair because of its unique, almost out of place existence, as if a reminder of a luxury that was denied to us - one of my mother's complaints till date is the absence of chairs for guests to sit on.

Almost equally to the chair, the other luxury that attracted me to my friends' houses was the accessible terrace. The idea of looking down the road from above still fascinates me. We has asbestos or tiles for our roofs. Sure you could get on top - just climb the shaky guava tree to get a grip of half the brick jutting out of the wall and heave yourself on top. However, you risk cracks on the asbestos that become vengefully visible during monsoons, or you just might be unlucky like the son of the corner house who, after a drunken fight with his father climbed up on his asbestos roof to threaten onlooking neighbors with a gun in his hand, fell right through the asbestos while his father attacked him with a shovel after freeing himself from the women of the household.

Reviews

[Dahlia]

I love this entry, its so simple yet it holds such a deep insight.