Voices

The first time we heard their voice was in 2000 when Niki was born & 2003 when Joyee was born. It was a cry – I guess that’s how all of us start to make sound. Over last 14 years they learnt to speak – starting from garbled words to the right word to the right diction.

On June 14, the voices faded away and the house grew silent. It is a strange experience when you live in a house which had all kind of voices filled in every nook & corner of house. Discussions / decisions / games / fights / crying / movie reviews / seeing TV together & so on & so forth.

As the days passed we craved for these voices and tried to create our own pseudo ways of recalling them. We started hearing their voices through things associated with them – like TV shows which they were glued on.

We would let the master chef play in the background just to have some presence in the house – we know the sofas are empty but in our mind as we cook or carry on with our homely chores we can visualize the kids sitting & sweating it out to find out who is getting eliminated.

We would see the entire season of - “Once upon a Time” all over again because these shows in some sense took us back to the time we spent together, more importantly it brought alive all the discussions & story telling done by Joyee as would inadvertently would have missed a few episodes.

It’s a startling contradiction we parents live with – when the kids were here they will bring the house down because of their fights, debates, discussions, finally one of us would step in & after lot of arguments 2 of them would go back to their corners. As parents we never enjoy the fights & it’s after effects. We would often say to each other – when will these kids grow up & make peace.

Now, when they did grow up & leave – the peace becomes unbearable at times. We keep waiting for the vacation to begin when the nook & corner of our house will once again get filled with voices - laughter, screams, shouts, discussions, compliments, wishes…….anything which will make both of us to live through till the next vacation. 

Come soon Babes…

Wrote on 06/01/2015