Rainbow

by Shikandin

[box]A mother and daughter share a poignant moment during a rainy afternoon. Flash fiction by our Writer of the Month, Shikhandin.[/box] [box type = “bio”]Shikhandin’s prose and poetry have been published in all five continents. She won the first prize in the Anam Cara Writer’s Retreat Short Story Competition 2012. Her poem “Cleavage” was in the long list of the Bridport Poetry Competition 2006 and also a finalist in the 2010 Aesthetica Creative Arts Contest. She won the first prize for a poetry review contest hosted by Cha: An Asian Literary Journal in October 2011. Her short story for The Verb Magazine’s “Looking at You Contest” won honourable mention and an excerpt was posted in the October 2007 issue. Her poem in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal was nominated for a Pushcart (2011) and also for the Best of Net Anthology by the same magazine. She has won many prizes in poetry contests in India. An excerpt from her story “Guitar” was shortlisted in the Art House Competition in August 2010. A poem by her – March” – was commended in the Writelinks’ Spring Fever Competition (UK), 2008. One of her stories – “Ähalya’s Valhalla”- was among the notable stories of 2007 in Story South’s Million Writers’ Award (USA). She was one of the participating poets at the Prakriti Poetry Festival, December 2008, in Chennai. She was a featured poet at the Poetry Slam organised jointly by the US Consul Chennai and The Prakriti Foundation in December 2009. She was an invited poet for the Hyderabad Literary Festival (2010) organised by Muse India and Osmania University Centre for International Programmes. She is one among ten Indian poets to feature in an exclusive forthcoming anthology edited by Jayant Mahapatra and Yuyutsu RD Sharma. [/box]

She’s down watching the little fat brown birds that have so much to say to each other and the squirrels too, but disapprove of humans. She’s the only one they tolerate, she claims. And I believe her, because I’ve seen them sitting on her sill many a time.

Then I hear her shouting. “Mamma, mamma! Come down! See the rainbow!”

I’m happy to hear her voice but disgruntled nevertheless to be made to get up and leave my chores.

“Come to my bedroom window at least,” she begs. “You can’t see it from yours!”

I go to her room and look out. I can’t see anything in the sky. But when I look down I see my rainbow alright; the tomato red T-shirt and gray slacks, and her hair halloing the afternoon breeze. When she yells again, I tell her that I saw my rainbow but not on the sky. And she laughs. Her laughter sounds like church bells against my dry ears.

“Come down. Come down! Mamma. See mine!”

So I go down. And finally see the rainbow that she’s been wanting me to see. It’s a quiet layer of seven colours; a single muted arc across the eastern sky with white clouds sliding down its back. She’s standing there, head tilted to one side ever so slightly, and squinting.  I look when she points, and watch the colours for long moments, with her. The air is a mist of saffron and the flowers are shy beneath her rainbow. The afternoon is a hush, awash with soft light. Even her brown birds are silent as they watch us.

“Wait for your mates,” I say. “Show them your rainbow.”

“You bet!” she says, nodding like a sunflower in the wind, and then she laughs from the sheer joy of it.

The sound of her joy sinks gently into my being, sending undulating ripples of a tender emotion. A stone in my heart seems to melt like ice cream set out on a plate on a warm day. And I’m able to inhale the faint sweet aroma of contentment without reason.

The wind carries her voice to places where songbirds compose their songs. I carry it back to my room now, in a pocket in my heart where I store my precious keepsakes.

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