Lakshmi Iyer's Blog, page 50

The Morning After – Birthday Edition

I lift the blinds on the side door. The room feels suddenly chill and I shiver. I continue to sort clothes into piles. When I am done, there are three. I start the washer and the sound of the walkie-talkie startles me. The twins are sitting next to each other on the sofa and talking […]

Microfiction: Twas The Day Before Christmas

Her discontent presses down like humidity, tainting everything it touches. He scrubs the pan, hunching over the sink, channeling his guilt. “What would you like for Christmas?” he asks, bracing himself for what is to come She is silent a tad longer. Her voice when it appears is wistful. “To be understood.” Another day, he […]

The Joys Of Giving

I hold Laddu’s hand as we walk slowly to her school. We stop and stare, we inspect rocks, we look for traces of snow. It is an excruciatingly slow process. We push the door open and she rushes to her friends and I swear internally. I extract her lunch box, put it away in the […]

Feeling A Lot Like Christmas

I stand at my kitchen island, an array of things spread in front of me. I work my way methodically. Greeting card first, a thoughtful note inside, a gift card taped to one side, a pashmina shawl folded to fit into a small organza bag, a tiny candy sampler. I knot and tie each back, […]

The Year Of The Walkbacks

As is now a habit, each year as we count down to the next year, I take stock. I trawl through my archives looking for the salient, the mentionables, the highpoint(s) of the year gone by. They are few and rare in between. This year January brought with it the era of the Drumpf, a […]

Fiction: It’s Not You. It’s Me.

She sat in the window seat watching the countryside fly by. It wasn’t yet winter but the window fogged up with her breath as she leaned closer to get a better view. The exchange on WhatsApp was playing on her mind. “Hey! Am in town this week. Meant to message you before I left… Any […]

Adorably Alien

I switch off the living room lights and spend just a minute basking in the lights of the pre-lit Christmas tree. I head to the study and open my phone to 8 new notifications on my Elfkins app. All of them from Pattu. She begs me to respond to her messages collapsing into giggles at […]

Never About You

I am almost done with cooking. I look at the kovakkai stir-fry one last time, taking in the crisp discs before turning the heat off. I pair lunch bags with school bags, remember to stick water bottles into side pockets and check my calendar for specials that day. Pattu has library today. I pull the […]

Conflicting. Conflicted.

“You ate octopus,” I say, my eyes wrinkled with laughter. I sneak glances at the back seat where all three of my children are sitting, seat belts holding them back. They are laughing. “What?!” Pattu is amused and shocked. Ammu grows quiet. “You mean we were meat eaters before you changed us?” the question is […]

Mommy. Maami.

I am elbow deep in rice batter when the word pattu crosses my mind. I mix the dosa batter enjoying the tactile sensation of batter against the skin when it hits me that I actually enjoy this stuff. I care about the texture of the maavu. I care about how I cook the eggplant. I […]