Everyday we drink tea, resting the tea cups on round jute coasters on a large brown wood coffee table with an even larger brown tinted glass surface.

The tint makes the newspapers below look 30 years old- as if they were fished out from our storage room, but of course they bear today’s day and date- neat and crisp.

The rusk often drips into the tea as we stare into our respective screens on quiet mornings of days’ that we know entail toil. The unuttered desperation for rest adds to the silence, broken periodically by the stunted cries of stunted sparrows. The sparrrows are smaller than they used to be 20 years ago. Their plumage pathetic now, dirt-like instead of the browns that we have preserved in our eyes.

A three-some of green parrots show up at the window near the dining table, overlooking the cemetery. Always in threes, and always silent for the fear of attracting a predator who’d claw them down.

Only once have I sighted a large hawk in our skies, gawking over the cemetery as if it was its land. How would I explain to it that that land is disputed property…

-Tanmay