THE CRACK ON MY WALL

There is a crack on my wall. It’s not a small crack and it’s not the only one. But this particular crack seldom fails to get on my nerves. I had it painted once. But it would not be deterred. Within a couple of months the paint on it flaked and it appeared again. What makes it even more irksome is that it has some gibberish scrawled across it. I did not scribble on that wall. It was my nephew. A boy, I think, who fancies himself to be Pablo Picasso creating ‘Guernica’. It was four years ago, when in a burst of inspiration he decided to decorate (or was that desecrate?) the wall. I was sorely tempted to box his ears. Unfortunately, the fact that my cousin sister, his mother was also staying with us then made me desist. I was not too keen to have my ears boxed, which is what would have happened if I had succumbed to temptation.

I deviate. I was talking about the crack on the wall, not about the scribbling on it. Remember the earthquake that hit Chennai some years ago? No one died. No buildings fell. Actually, nothing happened. It was more the novelty, of being an earthquake in Chennai that made it hit the news. Well, that day I was lying on my bed reading a novel when suddenly my bed started to shake. For a second I thought I was hallucinating. Then I sat up and stared at the walls. Realized that the walls were trembling too! My reflex action is not too reflexive. It behaves more like an afterthought. After a few seconds of contemplating whether or not to crawl under the bed, I remembered that my grandmother was in the house too. So I went to her room and there she was, sitting on the bed, her fists clenched together, white as a sheet. When she saw me, she immediately asked “Is it just me? Or do you feel it too?” She was petrified that this was the sign of impending death. My grandmother was 92 back then. So I can’t really blame her for thinking so. I said “No Patti, It’s an earthquake”. She said “Oh, ok. Fine. “. I could see the colour seeping back into her face.

Once the tremors stopped and I decided it was quite safe I went to my balcony. I live in the second floor. I could see almost every person from my apartments standing on the road. I could hear them discussing the earthquake each one interjecting the other. Exclamations of horror, secretly tinged with excitement. I watched them for a few seconds wondering what they found so fascinating about the earthquake that they had to; en masse gather to discuss it for so long (It was more than an hour that they stood there for). Later I would rue my stupidity. Aren’t everyone supposed to get out of high rise buildings the microsecond they feel an earthquake?

Anyway, I deviate. The reason I mentioned (Didn’t it seem longer than mentioning?) the earthquake was that I believe that it was this earthquake that caused the crack to form on the wall. The crack I so detest.