I watch a house fly flit in and sit on the rim of my mother's tea cup. Hesitantly, it tries to dip its two front legs into the milky brown liquid. The tea must be too hot for her liking. Or too unsavory. Either way she gives up her effort and moves off without wasting time. I let my eyes follow her as she makes a neat landing on the small pile of cream biscuits on the coffee table. I am sure she would find that much to her liking. Oblivious to her presence, my uncle extends his right hand for a biscuit. His big, thick fingers may have seemed like over-sized hotdogs to the tiny creature. It takes off immediately, moving away from harms way. But the promise of a delicious brunch holds her back from leaving the room. She circles the air, waiting for an opportune moment to descend.

I think I must have imagined it but I felt the fly was watching me as well. She must be amused to see a human share her fate right now – present in the room yet not present to those in the room, we became one in a while - a consciousness too small, too insignificant to be noticed. To her, these people were threats to be wary of. It wasn't much different for me either. Parents and elders in the family must have found it necessary to police a stubborn 10-year old all the time.

I sit on the floor watching them talk, waiting to be transported on the wings of their words into a world that would offer me temporary escape from the boredom of life. The air is cluttered around me with words. Big words, small words, casual words, formal words, words spoken in haste, in hate, in indifference. Words spoken without a reason, in unison, in the moment. The atmosphere is laced with intermittent burps, laughter, mumbled disagreements and sighs. They all hang in the air as if ignorant of their purpose, floating aimlessly, lazily. I try to put them together and find meaning. Desperately.

I wait in anticipation for them to cast their magic spell on me. I wish a fantasy too. I wish to laugh, cry, time travel, stand amidst the ruins of my family legacy and watch my grandfather drunk and naked, chasing a cat; I want to conspire against my absent uncles and aunts, share the shame of their infidelity, experience poverty, study under kerosene lamps, eat only home grown spinach and drink water to survive, walk 5 miles to school bare-feet, skinny dip in the village pond while large buffaloes rest peacefully in it. I want to escape the suffocating monotony of my everyday life.

But the words that come out of their mouth just keep swimming around me in the air. They sound empty. Hollow and flaky, they drift towards one another instead of reaching my mind. I watch them collide in midair and in reflex, cover my ears, expecting to hear a large explosion. Instead I see them crumble like saw dust and get sucked into each other's vortex. Till there is nothing but a large black hole that has swallowed every single word that has been spoken and now hovers ominously before me for more like a hungry monster.

Words don't cast magic spells. Not today. They get sucked into the black hole that exists in the air. I see the reality before me start to vanish. Without warning, the world is replaced by a two-dimensional mime. I don't know why, but I know the invisible void that mercilessly devoured their words is here to stay. So is the silence that divides our world. It will embalm me alive. Then force me to face a world that keeps talking to me while I no longer can hear.

I look for the fly. She seems to have left the room. My uncle has finished the biscuits. I watch his lips move animatedly but hardly hear
a thing.