Floor, Mat, People

There is no one who loves me enough to buy me a rose.

I'm nearly forty now, yes, I'll grant that. But even in my youth, not a soul ever thought to bring me a flower.
True, I could buy one myself—my pockets are deep enough. If I wanted, I could purchase an entire rose garden. That's the truth of it. And yet no one has ever been moved to buy a single bloom with me in mind, and this small thing haunts me today. It makes me feel like a colossal failure. I don't know why, but I'm seized with a desperate longing for a rose.

The truth is, there's no one waiting for me with rice and lentils laid out. I'd need time to remember when my wife and I last sat down together to share a simple meal of dal and rice. When we travel, within the country or abroad, we've dined in many hotels on foreign fare. But dal and rice—we've never shared that meal.
Today I'm consumed by a hunger to sit on a mat spread on the floor and eat steaming rice with dal, sharing it with someone, just once.
Alas, I have not a single soul to sit beside me and eat that simple meal.

I long today to sit around and talk idly with my brothers and sisters. In childhood, when my siblings and I would scheme at dawn to steal lychees from Uncle Majid's tree in the village—oh, to sit with them again and laugh until we're breathless, to revisit all those clever plots and foolish arguments.
Now my brothers and sisters meet only at the registry office, over matters of property and land. Beyond that, no one visits anyone's home—there's never time.
The brothers and sisters who once conspired with me to steal lychees—they're gone now. They've all grown into something else.

Buried beneath all these grand achievements, my small joys have simply vanished. Never before have I felt so guilty for who I've become.