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This story was published in an e-magazine Fried Eye 15th July 2012  https://www.friedeye.com/2012/07/the-ailing-abode.html The green fields growing tea plants look so dull today without you around. I wonder where you might be these days. It’s been a month that I last saw you. And when I returned today you are nowhere to be seen. Our last meeting was the day I left for Mumbai. That day, I could see the tears wetting the face of my mother. I could see the pain in my father’s eyes. I could see my sister crying near the Banyan Tree, hiding from me. What I could not see was the anxiety in your eyes, the upcoming peril you were about to face as I leave. I cared not of what the neighbors would say, or what my father’s fellow factory workers would say. I cared not of what my mother’s fellow tea plant workers would think, nor of what my sister’s to-be spouse would think. Nor did I care about you whose life, I knew not, was only a day more since I left. With bones of legs half b