I used to draw on walls
I was five.
We had come to Kerala to attend a cousin's wedding, and my parents were already
packing bags to go back. It had only been a day since the bustling and vibrant
occasion, and I was not ready to return so soon to the dull old life in Bangalore, where
my only company was my parents and a two-year-old brother.
I told my parents I wasn't willing to join them. I was certain they wouldn't let me
stay—a five-year-old alone with her grandparents and an aunt, with no other kids
around? That was unimaginable to them. But I had it all pictured in my mind, and it
looked beautiful.
I urged them to let me stay, pointing out instances from my life to prove that I was
independent. They ignored my protests of being a "big girl" and reminded me that I
was still a baby. Umma was more concerned about missing school. But I neither cared
about school nor gave up on persuading them.
Uppa sat me on his lap and said that if I went with them, he would buy me lots of toys,
chocolates, glitter pens, and whatnot. But if I didn't, he would never buy me anything
again. That was cruel of him. He had put me in quite a dilemma. But what he didn't
know was that he was barking up the wrong tree. I told him I couldn't be bought with
toys and chocolates and that, no matter what, I was going to stay right there.
I was stubborn. I had always been.
The next day, my family left.
Without me.
In the following days, I made sure all the walls of my ancestral home were adorned
with my sketches. Those pictures depicted what I wished to convey, what I longed to
scream out to the world.
Only I could make out what they were and what they meant. I sketched things that
almost looked like houses, trees, and people holding hands. Balloons and toffees.
I still draw on everything I find good enough, everywhere.
Only that, with time, 

the pictures grew into words.