It surprised me to see how quickly Neera adjusted to the village living. Old memories, like old habits, die hard. They reside somewhere within us, forsaken like childhood toys, forgotten like best friends from kindergarten, forbidden like innocent mistakes made during adolescence. In our attempt to evolve living the same life, refreshed several times, we bury the old under the new; yet, scrape the top just a little and they spill out, like fresh blood under a scarcely healed wound. Today is only the second day of her stay and Neera is already trotting the village path in her Abercrombie attire and Nike shoes. The village school that she remembered from her last visit had transformed completely, from a two-room mud-house into an eight-room brick-and-mortar box-house, complete with real wooden furniture. Right behind the school there used to be the only grocery store of the village, now replaced by a row of tidy shops, twelve in all. Neera saw one of the shopkeepers holding a cell
Articles, Poetry and Short Stories by Proma Ray.