I still think of you.

How could I forget his name? How many times in life's quiet evenings of solitude and sometimes in my noisy clatter of thoughts his memory has come floating to me ! Age is catching up with me.

That summer holidays we were in Kerala as usual. I was all of eight and he was the tailor who worked in the tiny tailoring shop close to my house. He must have been eighteen give and take a year or two. A thin dark boy in a green shirt.

Every morning in between his work, he would rush to me with a small pouch of savouries from Kumarettans tea stall. Bondas and dal-vadas, banana fritters and chocolates. I still see him laughing at my happiness on seeing the pouch. He would place it in my tiny hands and repeat the same words day after day, molu please call me 'nice uncle' like you call that other uncle of yours. I would promptly oblige and he would pick me in his arms and kiss my cheeks.

Days sped by and it was soon time for us to get back. He came that morning too, with a packet of warm goodies, hugged me and told me, "I will be in Bombay for this onam, you better practise calling me 'nice uncle' "...I remember climbing on the table and counting the days to onam once I got back home. Every day I would count the days. Months passed by, onam was around the corner when one evening I heard amma reading a letter out aloud to my grandma. It was from my aunt in Kerala. After she finished the letter she paused a minute at the N.B. and read ' that tailor boy Sudhan, he passed away last night, was found hanging in his room...

Now I remember his name . My nice Sudhan uncle.