Kamini

In the middle of 1993, we moved to Rangpur and started living in that Bungalow with the Kamini tree - Ma, Baba, my elder sister and me. When the olive jeep dropped us off at the front porch, it was already dark. There was no moon, not even streetlights. I was half asleep but too big to carry, so Ma took my hand on one of her palms and my sister’s in the other as we walked towards the steps leading to the patio. A sudden gust of wind kissed us all, bathing us in a refreshing, sweet scent. I stumbled on the second step and saved myself by grabbing something that felt like a tree trunk.

Ma switched on the light once we were on the patio. The dim light bulb condensed the darkness even more . I turned to see what I had grabbed. I could barely make out the silhouette of a tree beside the steps. Not a big tree, it seemed, a few slender trunks braided together, leaning against a column. The foliage and flowers, if there were any, were still invisible in the dark. I decided to investigate it tomorrow. I was just glad it wasn't a Shakchunni’s  hand.     

The teal wooden door was wide open. The movers had dropped off all the furniture in the living room, although Ma had painstakingly labeled them. All the cabinets, dressers, and tables were cramped together, standing like a closely-knit, space-invading family. To nine-year-old me, it was an amazing maze. My brain woke up - ready to explore the puzzle.

The smell of freshly painted white walls lingered in the room. I went over the bed frame that stood just beside the teal door, ducked under the brown formica-covered dining table and moved steadily towards the giant wooden cabinet where Ma hid all her treasures. Now was the perfect time to dig them up from the mysterious cabinet.  I found a narrow passageway between the dresser and the green steel cabinet that would take me to my destination. I slid carefully through that passage in tippy toes.

“Samia!”

I startled and bumped my elbow against the dresser. 

“Ouch”... It  hurt.

The dresser wobbled a bit, then steadied itself, thankfully not tilting over and crushing me against the steel cabinet. My mom quickly came over and pulled me out of that crammed room, sending me towards the bedroom at once. Adults are boring and do not understand the splendor a maze offers, I thought while brushing my teeth that night.

I woke up the next day in a new room, in my old bed, with a strange, uncomfortable yet somehow good feeling. I assumed that’s how you feel when you wake up in a new place. The roof seemed higher than it had last night. The wall in front of me had two large windows, letting in all the sunlight they could. I got off the bed, put on my flip flops and yelled out of habit, not that I needed anything - “Ma! Maaaaa….”. 

Nobody answered. I carefully looked around for anything new. Everything was new. The diamond-patterned mosaic floor that was criss-crossed with thin lines of green glass. A weird-looking ceiling fan that said 1987 on one of the blades. The white wooden frame of the windows. Through them, I saw the tall columns of the front patio, supporting the slanted roof.  It was the first time in my nine-year-old life I saw a roof made of corrugated iron sheets. The metal beams were orange from all the rust on them. The concrete columns that carried the roof and those rusted beams seemed to me the utmost architectural wonder.  Beyond the patio lay the luscious green front yard, and the guava trees standing along the boundary walls. 

It was the guava trees that sold me on the house that very first morning. I ran to the front yard without brushing my teeth or freshening up. On my way, I passed the Kamini tree from last night;, the dense sweet scent of the white bunch of flowers distracted me for a moment, but the spreading branches of the guava trees were calling me eagerly.  I grabbed the highest branch I could reach and hung on it, swaying back and forth. I made sure it could hold my weight, then put my feet on the main trunk and pulled myself up to that branch. What a view!  I took a deep breath and felt like the queen of the world. The leaves felt like velvet on my small fingers, and the sweet smell of the yellow-green guavas hypnotized me. I closed my eyes and jumped.

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