simulacrum of life

one of my earliest distinct memories about thatha were of seeing him rock to sleep my sis and my cousin. he'd sit on the sofa, barebodied and wearing his sarong. he'd place the child he was rocking in the basket formed by the sarong between his legs. then, he'd start alternately shaking his legs VERY vigorously. this wasn't any gentle sorta lulling to sleep business. more likely that we ended up being very dazed and disoriented as a result of the rocking and nodded off feeling nauseous.. not to forget that during this time he'd be puffing on his pipe. so it was kinda cute to see the puffs of smoke emerging to the rhythm of the rocking. like a choo choo train.

another early memory was him feeding my cousin and me rice with fish curry. my grandma used to cook fish curry with one of those fishes with tons of bones. thatha was concerned that we wouldn't know to spit out the teeny weeny bones, and so he did what i refer to as his "bird act". he'd basically chew the fish and remove all the bones and then feed it to us. even after picking out all the bones, he'd warn us to chew carefully and to not choke on any bones. i think he was overly concerned about us choking because he ALWAYS made sure that we had a glass of water with us when we ate. we were not to drink it during the meal, but it was there just in case, to help flush something down if it got lodged in our throats.