As a kid, I remember standing in front of the fridge at our home and comparing my height with it. This blue fridge was always taller than me. So, a quiet little fridge, standing in the corner of our home, had a way of making me feel warm by showing me that I was still small and young.
Today, out of the blue, my thoughts and existential reality shifted to reverse gear, and I realised and remembered my younger self. I looked at my hands and they looked so big, and sort of wrinkled. They were supposed to be tiny and soft, I wondered. Whose hands were these? I was slowly spiralling into an identity crisis. I waited to get back home after work. I kept my bag aside and slowly walked towards my big red double-door fridge, to just stand beside it.
The reality of the situation then glared back at me. Here I was, taller than the tallest fridge I had ever seen in any of the homes that I lived in. When did this happen? When did I grow so much? How did this happen so suddenly? Is sudden the correct word for it? I hear a loud voice in my head saying that it wasn’t sudden. It has been 35 years, my dear grown-up.
I slide down the adjacent wall and sit down near the fridge. I think of all the years that have passed by. School, college, post-graduation, marriage, a kid and so on. I look up and see my fridge. It was now standing tall and telling me that it was okay. It said that you might be ‘called’ a grown-up now but you are not grown up; you are still that little, innocent naughty girl that I have always known of. I did not know what to do and just hugged it. My big red fridge.
Dr Nimisha V is a daughter, wife, and mother of a 3-year old, working in a Medical College in Palakkad.