It was 11 o’clock on a regular Sunday when the corrugated cardboard box appeared on my doorstep.A parcel from home. The address ,unmistakable .This cardboard boxes were like invisible strings connecting me to my home some two thousand miles away, they’d show up with a short notice of my mother almost always contained books I left despite the compulsive double checking before leaving , ethnics from my mother’s wardrobe when occasions demanded and rarely gifts and festive foods when a short length of holidays ,tests or overpriced air travel tickets bared me from crawling back home.But what confused me today was the size of the cardboard box its small dimension unlike the usual massive ones or even the medium sized ones and to add up to that there was no prior phone call from my mother.I quickly reached for the kitchen scissors and unpacked it – a half ripe tangerine , a zinnia flower no note.The strange thing about memory is that it sucker punches you when you are the least ready, pushes you back in time like clockwork ,a montage plays and a story unfolds.

That was the year of keeping friends at arms length , strangers at two metres and sanitisers in our chest pockets.Somebody’s uncle was always on low spO2, hospital visits were dreaded , while honey and ginger tea recipes with arrays of secret ingredients were shared like magical antidotes.There were no shoulders to lean on, no hands to hold when our clumsy feets tripped and we eye smiled and nod talked our way through empty alleys.

That February while the world jolted down its tin shutters due to the wrath of a virus , somewhere in a solemn estate far from the city’s air and speakers imposing distance and curfews there was a women with wrinkle coarsed hands and quicksilver hair.The looms of her bones ,pleats of her skin and the moist of her eyes carved her into something ancient. My grandmother.My grandmother a gleaming laugh from 1957. My grandmother the keeper of a thousand stories and her green shed house the years most beautiful calendar.

The months rolled by , seasons mimiced time and she grew flowers in terracotta tubs, empty paint cans , shriveled rain boots , worn out tires. In April, orchids ornamented latent mango branches while songbirds lulled in taller trunks.When the old radio fetched news of luit drowning our valleys and rain flooding the capital, it meant monsoon .The time when broken twigs and stems adorned with flowers – the collateral damage of a heavy shower found refuge in the dining table vase quietly adding 'exquisite' to dinner table conversations.On Octobers a quilt of hewali flowers veiled our frontyard ,and for lunch avant garde recipes were cooked and taste buds were won over.December meant slow reading under a wobbly garden umbrella, varnished tea trunk stumps for seat, pomello feasts and the fleeting warmth of the sun delving me in and then breaking up my reverie. It was evident that her garden adjusted its fringes and croons ,sounds softened around its edges ,the teak trees aligned their canopies only to spare her little technicolor cavern from the erratic world outside.

Second to her green shed house ,my grandmother loved science though she didn’t knew much about science, she knew exactly when and where the harvest moon would show up ,pulled out birthcharts and horoscopes on my sick days ,questioned planets and held the stars hostage .Taught me this trick to touch gold in the bioluminence of a new moon for luck , pointed out to me constellations that hovered over our backyard skyline even though she couldn’t name even one.My grandmother loved science though she didn’t knew projectiles or rocket science but in the dancing sunlight of a green shed house she sowed seven rows of zinnias just because she heard me once read ‘An orange Zinnia flower grown in NASA’s veggie chamber aboard the International Space Station is one of the first flowers ever grown on space’

Some two thousand miles away from this songlaced city that crumbles paper hearts. The mightiest of all astronauts ,my grandmother smells more like sandalwood and less like prescription drugs tonight.