They bring Grand-mother¹s Gangrend leg out of the operation theaterŠ It is wrapped in a sheet, and I wonderŠ Is she still waring the ring?

When they brought out grandmother¹s leg from the operation theatre, I remembered, how, years and years ago, she would sit in the backyard beside a tub, put the crying infant me supine on her leg and give me one hell of a bath. This was one of my earliest memories and it was probably due to the curious little ring that the grandmother wore on her toe. It had fascinated me till I was about three or four. My memory started where her leg ended. I wondered if the heavily bandaged amputated gangrened leg that they brought out for the family¹s perusal still bore that ring. She had varicose veins in both her legs, and it was a daily ritual all through my childhood to lie down beside her every night after supper as she rubbed Iodex on her paining legs, and listen to a story. As a teller of tales, she was unsurpassable. AladdinŠSindbaad the SailorŠ the fables of EasopŠstories from the great epics Ramayan and Mahabharat. Every night he waged a battle against sleepŠ I always wanted moreŠ just one more story! Many I had heard many times before, but each time richer in detail, with a lovely new touch, or a turn of some phrase a little different than before and infinitely more delightful. She tenaciously retained all the good things in a story, never letting them go, and the new effects that were brought in were tried and judged even as they were being recounted, and discarded if not good at the next rendering.

Strangely, I remember all this lucidly and coherently in my dreamŠ. the dream of watching my grandmother¹s leg being brought out after the surgeryŠ.