*Dipti's Home

I have a physical reaction every time I hear the bells ring in our annoying neighbours house, they ring when the clock turns 7pm as the dusk sets in and it feels almost as if the ghost of you just passed through my body ringing the same bells. The bells, delicately carried in your left hand and concentrating on bringing good energy into the house for your daughters and husband through the flame in your right hand, a plea to god every single day - to protect, to keep healthy, to bring joy and courage, to help your family thrive - the brass diya glistened with your ghee fingerprints as the flame burnt through the night - carrying all your hopes and desires - none for your self and thousands for everyone else. 

And now we sit here, listening vicariously to the sound of someone else's bells that no longer ring here - in the home built without you, one with no physical traces of you - but your absence echoes in every presence of you that percolates through all our handpicked colours and items - we decorate this house as a museum of your memory, collecting reluctantly new ones in our hearts - plastering the walls with your frozen smiles in photographs so desperate to tell the the visitor about you who lived, who lives here - somewhere, somehow, invisible, omnipresent, forever gone.

We named this house after you, Dipti Aalay*. We made a marble mandir for you and set up all your idols with care, just as you would've. Papa lights the Diya every day as dusk sets in, but there are no ringing bell sounds. The brass numbers - 1302 Dhal's glistens underneath your name that is apparently our home - unsettled with some Araldite - to build a home by cinematic orchestra plays coincidently (?) as I unwrap the letters - and I weep - for your name will be the only home that we search for, for the rest of our lives.