seeing ants....

..tiptoeing a trail of some uninvited ants under a kerosene lit lamp with my Dad. yes, now that I think back, that has got to be my earliest memory of my childhood. It was just after sun down and my Dad had found the ants crawling into a space in the kitchen and wanted to show us. I was probably around 3 years old, and my sister, barely a year older. I don't think we had electricity (or running water) in that house. Being so small at the time, I don't really remember all the details but it was very small with a built in lattice front porch. We were just thrilled to see the ants crawling patiently one after the other, and we just couldn't hide our excitement. Were they red or black ants? I wish I'd remembered, not that it matters. As we got closer to the end of ants trail, the flame of the lamp burnt the inside of my sister's arm. She probably winced in pain, the memory is so vague & it's all patchy in my head so I don't remember everything now. She carried the scar well into her teens it would ignite our conversations over the ant story all over again. It was something we always connected without any effort, those moments were hard to come by especially when we were both teenagers.We fought an awful lot :(

The only surviving pictures taken in that house are neatly stashed away in a family album back home in Sri Lanka. My mom dressed beautifully in a Saree and looking so young & pretty & slim, my dad in pants & a button down shirt and my sister and I dressed in look-alike dresses sitting on the bar in our lattice front porch, with the biggest grins we all could muster. Now it feels like a lifetime ago....