In the shadow of the crib

Dramatic sounding title and all, what?

The picture was taken in bright afternoon light and had such stark shadows that it was not to be resisted.

Sunita had just come to fetch it after work and I had to quickly take a few shots before she took it away. It must have been a long day for her but she waited patiently, indulgently even, as I took the pictures. She understood, I think, something of the sentimentality that had me going.

In fact I fancy that it stuck us both similarly when she helped me bring it down from the attic yesterday. Big, heavy, strongly wrought, old fading green – it weighed oddly of memories as we manoeuvred it out of the narrow attic door. It came down with pipes and cartons and old furniture. All to be sold for scrap. But we did not know what to do with the cradle. Sending it back to the attic, for another twenty something years, to be decided about later? Too foolish to be considered. Fortunately Sunita took a fancy for it. She has no immediate use of it – her own daughter is only sixteen, but she couldn’t resist it. It was that kind of cradle.

Objects do record life, you know. Some more than others, perhaps. A cradle, I think would do this more vividly than most. Emotions around a cradle are sharper, more lucid and somehow… universal. Joy, anxiety, pride, sleep. All basic, all intense. This cradle of my childhood told of all this and also of peace. For itself it proclaimed a solid dependability. It was a happy cradle.

My mother tells us it has rocked three generations of babies in our family and the first to own it is over seventy now.

But attics have got to be cleared. And overlarge wrought-iron cradles have got to go. But I am glad that it hasn’t gone to the Kabadiwala’s just yet. Its inheritance of impressions won’t be broken down to scrap just yet. Its good that the cradle managed to convince Sunita to take it home with her.