Portrait of Life

Written as seen through her eyes… March 30, 2010. 

In loving memory of Jerlene Rose Papachan.

My best friend.

My childhood buddy.

Filling up my page on a friend’s slam book with half a mind about completing my record due for tomorrow, I sat wondering, how annoying the questions could get! While racing across, answering them with just few words, being as brief as possible, I stumbled across a question, “Most precious moment of your life?” I smiled. I didn’t know what to write. I stared out the window that brought in the cool night breeze.

My most precious moment in life…Hmmm… There have been lots, and with so many people. My dad, who believes in me so much, more like a friend, my bro, mom and sis, my cousin sisters, my childhood friend, and all my friends at school… Life was always like a wonderful song, you sing along, wish along, and live along. I thought of home, back to the portraits that a small shelf in the living room held. They held long living memories. A portrait made me laugh. It was me smiling with only two teeth in the front, standing before a cake. It was taken for my birthday, years ago. We used to celebrate birthdays with nice parties. I shared my birthday with my first cousin. She was my good friend too. I remember how I used to give everyone my two teeth wide smile when I used to get gifts. All my uncles used to come home and there would be their usual jokes and fun. We used to play card games and sponsored nice gifts for the winners. I had for once ended up with a small plate as gift that I could have done nothing with and was so sad!

There were other portraits too. My bro stood behind me and my sis. He had pulled my hair at the right time and my face looked like I was whining when the picture was clicked. I had been eating his head all the time and he had wanted his revenge. Sis was someone I could share everything with. They were so elder to me, but they never made me feel the difference. Now there was another one, my cousin, me and my best friend in between us. It looked really funny now. I and my cousin were making weird faces, it would have been impossible to even speculate what was going through our heads. My best pal, he sure looked like a monkey when he made faces. My cousin and I loved gossiping as we grew up. Talking about our crushes and growing up experiences.

My best friend stood next to me in another of the portraits. Having his hand on my head, I stood very small to him at the time. He had been my friend since I was a little kid. I used to stay at his place while mom and dad were at work, his mom would take care of us. We used to make card castles and even play with the tape out of his dad’s audio cassette collections. And he would get really angry when I used to blow the castles to the ground before he could complete them. I would go home and tell mom and dad a detail of what he would do when he got angry. They would simply laugh.

Something fell to the ground with a bang and I snapped out of my vision. I couldn’t seem to adjust to the dimly lit room that I was in now. My dreams had been so bright. I looked out at the window, the breeze had become cold. Smiling still, I thought how life had changed, over the years. No longer were those parties so lively and they had even become so less frequent. There were no birthday’s to celebrate, no games to play… I was to stay away from parents, my friends. Though the ride was always worth the while, I missed everyone so much. They all stayed in touch, my friends at school and my childhood pal. Later on in life I figured that they were always the best of friends. My bro and sis had to leave for their higher studies, they would always say, “do you know how lucky we are to have a sis like you”

Now here I was, sitting silently with an endlessly rattling fan above me. I thought about how I’d grown, over the years, met lots of people, and learned how things are. I was a big- big girl in a big-big world… From Joining college, with dreams to excel and yet having slept in class rooms and trying my best not to get angry while drawing diagrams in records and even calling up my friend in the dead of the night and whining that I was not going to be able to make the model of the teeth that sir had asked us to bring, life had gone a long way. It wasn’t really about sitting and worrying. And being the most carefree person about everything and sitting up late at night chatting about matters that no longer matter, I feel I have still never lost myself in the plunge.

Still wondering what to write in the blank of the page below the question “your most precious moment”, I somehow realized what to write… Scribbling through in the low light and accidentally remembering that I had record work for tomorrow, I wrote down what I felt.

“Life was just a portrait. You piece it together and you see the big picture. You look closer and you see another million pictures. And if you look too close to one, you miss out on the others. Life is just a portrait of a million moments, and I think almost all are and will always be, ‘precious’…”